write stories about my mom

It’s a story about me, being a goober.

I was reading through my sister’s old blog posts, and I came across one about Mother’s day, and how she took her to the movies to see Psycho, because Mom was a huge fan of Hitchcock. She had taken picture of her in her pink and blue jacket, with her bright pink scarf, and typical pile of colors.

I clicked on the link to see the pictures, and they were gone. Nothing but red x’s. I thought of Mom as disappearing and turning into a red x, and it made me cry.

People die every day, and leave behind those they love, but here I am sobbing over red x’s. I want them to be pictures.

When my mom used to send letters and cards in the mail (which she did, even after the internet), she put stickers on them; All kinds of stickers; Usually sparkly ones.

She and her best friend, Nina, and Nina’s Aunt Bubba all wrote letters to eachother, and always put lots of stickers on the letters. After Nina died, Mom and Bubba still kept in touch. She called her Aunt Bubba, and us kids all did, too, even though we’d never met her.

And, Mom sent letters and cards to me, decked out in a million tiny pictures, so I bought stickers and did the same for her, even though I wasn’t as good at finding all the best ones, like she was.

Mom and Aunt Bubba died around the same time, and I still have a drawer full of stickers that never got sent.

The other day I was on the road with my husband, coming home from a weekend in KY, which is about an eight hour drive from our house. We were stocked up on junk food and sodas, and he was eating Grandma’s brand cookies. We got into a conversation about our favorite cookies. Of this particular brand, I loved the peanut butter cookies when I could eat them.

It suddenly reminded me of how my mom used to make peanut butter cookies. Not just any ordinary peanut butter cookies though – My mom made the best peanut butter cookies in the world. I’ve had good ones sense, but they never compared to these. These, you’d be taking a bite, and it would be like a completely normal, soft, warm cookie – but the flavor was perfect – and then you’d get this bite of sweet peanut butter, right in the middle of it.

She used to make big bowls of them at a time – enough to feed an army, but that was years and years ago. She got too tired to make cookies when I was really young, and I spent my whole childhood searching for a peanut butter cookie that tasted as good. She thought I was crazy anyway, because she didn’t think they were anything special. And now I can’t eat most cookies, because it turns out I’m allergic to the flour. But I swear, my mom made the best peanut butter cookies ever.

Of course, everyone goes through it at some time or another. When I have these days, I go on youtube and listen to Israel Kamakawiwio’Ole singing Somewhere over the Rainbow. It’s such a beautiful song. We played it at her funeral, but it makes me think of her life.

My sister called me and said that she had run across something I wrote in my blog about Mom when I was living with her. A little piece about the ways she amused, and drove me to utter madness all in one fell swoop; Just a little piece of her personality. I thought I’d share it here:

Let’s Make A Deal

Mom: Hey G, would you like to make a deal?

Me: About what?

Mom: Well, what do you want?

Me: I wanna know what we’re making a deal about.

Mom: Well, we can’t make a deal if you don’t want anything.

Me: ...No, I don’t wanna make a deal.

Mom: Are you sure?

Me: What do you want?

Mom: I want to make a deal.

Me: About what!?

Mom: Well, what do you want?

Me: What?

Mom: What do you want to make a deal about?

Me: ...I’m through with this conversation.

Mom: You mean you don’t want to make a deal?

It goes on like this for a while. My mom is so weird.

My sister told me she was happy to have found this, because it’s nice to remember the quirky things about a person, and she wondered, did Mom have something specific in mind, or was she just in the mood to strike up a deal? I said she definitely had something in mind, but it must have been something I wouldn’t have wanted to do, because she was obviously trying to get me to sign the dotted line before I knew what it was… Probably buy her a cheeseburger.

The world will never know…

(Now, here’s that song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ltAGuuru7Q&feature=related)

When we would go out to restaurants, Mom always snagged all the ketchup packets, sugar packets, lemon juice packets, free rolls, or whatever kind of eatables were available to hoard. When she was at meetings, book club, doll club, anywhere where snacks were served, she always had zip-lock bags handy – and everyone, I mean everyone I knew, thought she was the cutest little thing.

I’d be embarrassed to death if I was with her, covertly helping to stuff as many goodies into a plastic baggy as I could. They’d help her with a smile, and if I saw them later at the grocery store, or on the street, they’d say, “Oh, I just love your mom! Send her my love – she is so sweet!”

So, she was quirky, and had a weird propensity for grazing on freebies, and everyone knew it, but they all adored her in spite of it, and sometimes because of it.

I was eating tomatoes yesterday (isn’t this a nice bridge?) I am addicted to tomatoes, and I’ve been trying to learn to make tomato soup from scratch, but I just can’t stop eating those damned delectable tomatoes while they’re fresh… so, I was hoovering all the tomatoes, like I do, and I got to thinking about my mom, and how she used to talk about being poor when she was young, and leading this kind of exciting bohemian lifestyle. The way she told it sounded romantic, but it’s sparse and impoverish when I run all her old stories in my head.

See, she lived in this old run down, possibly condemned apartment run by some kind of slumlord, I guess, worked as a dishwasher for next to nothing, and spent her nights sleeping on a fold out lawn chair in a dingy room spiffed up by a single paper lantern. When she went out for a night on the town, it sometimes consisted of walking into a restaurant, ordering a bowl of piping hot water, and filling it with ketchup – make-shift tomato soup, from scratch.

I suppose, then, that it was just ingrained in her to take food where she could get it. Or to always be thrifty. Or to be her own strange self without regrets, because in the broad scheme of things, nobody really cared, and she came away with free cookies. I’m not sure what the answer is, and I’m certain it’s best not to over analyze it. Also, every once in a while, I find it is healthy to grab an extra packet of ketchup in her honor. Old habits die hard, unless they’re just too stubborn to die at all. Then you just pass them to your kids.

She was a badass, plain and simple. No, she didn’t have tattoos, or drive a Harley. She was 4’10”. That’s below the average height of a fifth grader. But make no mistake – that woman was tough as nails. She was a lioness, and we were her cubs.

So, there was this girl at school who bullied me. She was bigger than me, and sneaky as hell. She would come up behind me, and pinch my back really hard, then tell me not to tell the teacher, or she’d do it again. I never got wise to the fact that she was going to do it either way. The teacher would just hear me crying, and ask what was going on.

“Nothing,” I’d say, so then we were both in trouble for saying anything at all.

On open house day, Mom asked me which girl it was, and I pointed her out. She approached the girl. She didn’t want to talk to her mom – she had a feeling her mom would just insist that her little girl was a sweet little angel.

“Excuse me,” said my mom, “My daughter say you’ve been picking on her. Now, I want you to stop it.”

Then came the water works. I mean, immediately, that girl started crying, and everyone turned and asked what awful thing my mother did, and the girl pointed at her and said she was picking on her. The teacher and the little bully’s mother both jumped in at once, and made a big to-do, trying to figure out what kind of abusive thing my mom had said.

The girl’s mother insisted that she ought to be ashamed of herself, making her sweet little daughter cry. Oh… my. Mom laid into her. She didn’t’ scream, but she let them both have it, and she let them know that her children were not to be bullied.

I admit, it was kind of a scene, and most likely made all of the other parents uncomfortable. I imagine the teacher was on the verge of having her kicked out. I was embarrassed to death, myself. I begged her to stop. I was certain that all the other kids would make fun of me for it the next day.

Funny, none of the other kids ever mentioned it though. And that girl sent me a written apology, and never bothered me again. Things weren’t perfect after that – they never are, but I’ll never forget that scene. It was years before I realized the poignancy of that moment though – it was really an illustration of how she took on the world for her kids in so many ways.

Mom was a little crazy; Sometimes she was a pain, but she was always a force to be reckoned with, and she was on my side. How extraordinarily fortunate I was to be hers.

My mom would count to three. She’d say, “I’m going to count to three, and if you don’t stop, by God, you’re not going to like what happens.”

When we were out in public, and we misbehaved, and she started counting, people would occasionally stare in dismay.

Sometimes they might ask “What happens when you get to three?”

I’m sure they were expecting something awful, but she never once got to three. We were afraid she’d open up into a black hole and swallow everything.

When I was in high school, I took an art class. We were instructed to draw some sunflowers that the teacher brought in, in black ink, with one continuous line. If I recall correctly, we could look at the paper, but weren’t supposed to concentrate on it too much. We were instead to concentrate on the shape of the flowers.

Each student, our teacher pointed out, had a unique way of seeing the shapes, and putting them on paper, even though we were all using the same technique. We would have an open house soon, and she would leave all these pictures hanging on the wall, so that the parents could pick out their children’s drawings. It sounds like kindergarten now, but even when you’re taking art in high school, you still want to show off your work.

So, open house came along, and mom was doing well, so she made it to the school that night, and met up with the teachers. She spent the most time with the art teacher. She wanted to see all my work, but before that, she went to the wall with the line drawings, and immediately picked out my picture, although I had not signed it.

I said, “Mom, how did you know it was mine?”

“Because, I know your work,” she told me.

I was really surprised, because I didn’t, and still don’t, think that I am that distinctive. I also didn’t do a lot of continuous line drawings in black ink, but she still knew my work over everyone else’s. I guess she really knew me better than anyone, like any mom should. When I look back through the years, this is a really good memory. It’s a very simple thing – probably one of the least interesting things I’ve ever said about her – but it warms me to know that she really knew me, even when I didn’t know it.

Okay, Ladyslipper’s recent entry made me think of this one:

A couple of years ago, my mom used to forward me these really annoying chain letters or stupid jokes in emails that said all kinds of silly crap about how I needed to send them to five other people, count to some number, and an angel would grant me a wish or something. I’d complain to my husband (then, boyfriend) about how this drove me crazy, but I didn’t want my mom to feel bad, so sometimes I would send her back a note to say “Thanks” and “That was very cheerful,” or “Oh, how funny.”

It was dishonest of me, and for other people who sent chain letters, I do not extend the same “courtesy”. I just wanted to make my mother happy.

Only, one day, several months after her death, I was talking to my sister, and she told me, “You know what’s funny? Mom used to send me those god-awful annoying chain letters that talked about angels and teddy bears, and things I know full well she didn’t care about at all.”

“Yeah, she did that to me too,” I said, “What was the deal with that?”

“Well, I asked her about that, and she said that she just hated them so much, she had to pass on the misery, and she thought we would understand.”

“Wait, so she was trying to get me to share how much I hated them too?”

“Yeah, it would seem so.”

“Well, crap.”

So, in the end, my mom left this earth thinking that I liked all that crap, and probably wondering where she went wrong and humoring me all the way. The fact that she died carrying that image of me to the grave (or, pile of ashes, anyway) has since seemed to me to be a great big practical joke from her to me. I should have expected as much! Thanks a lot, crazy lady!

This isn’t exactly a story about my mom, but it’s a story about this dream I had about her for years, from the time I was a kid to when I was a young adult. It was a really good dream, one I miss sometimes.

See, I would be in my house, or at my grandma’s house, depending on where I’d been spending the most time lately, and I’d find a secret doorway. Sometimes it would be behind a curtain, or in the closet. Once it was in my grandma’s garage, and when I opened it, there was another door, and another behind it, and so on. I’d open all these doors, and finally I’d get to this secret place that I’d never seen before.

I mean, it was pretty much the same place every time, but in my dream, it was always new, and what it was, was this warehouse type place that was full of antiques. I don’t know why it always struck me the way it did, but I was really in awe of this place. The antiques, I guess they were just really interesting things. There would be simple items, like lamps, and vintage furniture, and then there would be an area full of giant plumes, and peacock feathers, and sometimes elaborate Mardi Gras masks.

I’d be fascinated with this place, and then I’d look down one aisle of antiques, and there my mom would be, dusting, or admiring something small, and I’d ask her “What is this place?”

She’d always smile, and tell me about how it had always been there, and it was just sort of a secret little hideaway of hers. She would have told me about it before, but it seemed like a better idea to wait for me to find it myself. She would giggle with delight that I had finally found it, because now she could share.

And that’s it. I’d kind of breath it all in and say “Wow,” and then I’d wake up, wondering what kinds of fanciful secrets my mom really had, and if she was really itching for me to finally discover them on my own. And I wonder, of all the things I know about her now, if any of them came close to scratching the surface.