A Nod to My Mom
Ahhh, Mother’s Day. The one day of the year intended to make us turn the tables on our Mothers and do for them what they do for us every other day of the year.
I had one of those mothers who when she was great she was really great… but when she was not…
There is a mixed bag of emotions when I think of her. I often say she was not a ‘milk and cookies’ mom. In other words she would never ever have thought to bring me and my playmates milk and cookies. I would stare in slack jawed awe at the mothers of my friends whenever they did these sorts of things.
My mother loved books and passed that trait on to all four kids for which we are all eternally grateful. But, let me tell you, you did not want to be the kid coming in the back door with a skinned knee if she had just sat down with her tea and her novel.
She was not the type to pass on motherly advice, but she did have her opinion on things. (I come by that trait honestly.) She would continuously warn her four children against marrying too young but never really specified why.
She was the founding member of the grammar police. When she was ailing near the end of her days, I suggested she go lay down. Ouf. With every bit of energy she could muster, with her fists clenched next to her face, she spat out “LIE down — I am not a HEN!” And for the first time in our long history of her correcting my use of lay and lie, I got it.
She had an excellent sense of humour. Not that she was one to crack jokes – she only had one joke that she could remember, but she always saw the ‘funny’ in a situation and loved to recount her favourite stories.
When I think of her legacy I can best sum it up as “Don’t consume junk.” i.e., don’t eat junk food, don’t read junk books, or heaven forbid, watch junk television. (We used to fight over my love of Gilligan’s Island.) And, although she never said it in so many words, there was enough implied in her opinions of men to add ‘junk men’ to that list.
I expect most of us have at least some mixed feelings for our mothers; what they did or didn’t do, what we wish they would have done more of, or less of. My mother was 39 when I was born, I was 39 when she died. She and I never quite moved into the ‘friend’ stage of a mother-daughter relationship. For that reason, I would have liked to have known her longer.
Stay safe everyone.
That’s a very good distillation of her. I especially liked the perception of her being so anti-junk. Exactly!
I know right? She did have a critic’s eye when it came to books and movies.
Thank you,
A.
I’ve just discovered your blog and I’m touched by this post, and several of the others I’ve read.
You could very well be describing my mother, a woman I’m sure you never met. It’s always been a struggle for me to encapsulate a woman who was by turns amazing, giving, wonderful, and oh so infuriating. And critical, oh boy! She would regularly give my young friends and *me* lectures on subjective vs objective pronouns. This was embarrassing enough until the time she gave the lecture to my future mother-in-law *whom* she had just met! Mortifying!
And yet there was nothing she wouldn’t do for us. I could always tell she wanted to be everything we needed (maybe that was part of the problem)
I was in my late 30s when she began an inexorable decline into dementia. Like you, I never really got to the “friend” stage of a mother/son relationship; and very much like you I would have liked to know her longer and better.
Thank you Ian C., and welcome to Contentment is for Cows.
This is a lovely descriptor of your Mother and I get that it falls far short of describing who she was. I try always to temper my stories about my mother with balancing qualifiers. I’m sure you do too.
Your comment is much appreciated.
A.