The day is on the wane as I finally have time to sit and write this so if I want to get something in marking Mother’s Day, I need to get rock n’ rollin’ on this thing. Victoria – that was her given name at birth. She goes by Vickie.
Anyhow, as a kid I had no idea how scary and anxiety-laden life must have been for her after she wound up divorced and living on Wal-Mart wages as the single mother of three kids. Hell, I only had two kids and that was enough for me. A month after my daughter was born, I was laid out in an urologist’s office having my swimmers cut off at the pass.
I’m not sure if two kids squabbling reaches lord of the flies level, but I assure you – get three kids together and you’re only a hair’s-breadth away from belzebubbian rabble and a dead pig’s head on a stick. Anyhow, my mom had to put out fires constantly as she lived with that crap every day.
I know I could be frustrating to Mom. Call it air-headed, absent-minded, ADHD, head-in-the-clouds, whatever – but Mom would give me a simple task to perform, say, cleaning the kitchen counter and I’d get distracted and come just short of setting the living room on fire. “Jeff, you could screw up a wet dream,” she’d tell me.
Of course Mom could be encouraging. Fearing I was destined to play the fool all my life, I once asked her, “Mom, is there anything I’m good at?”
“Yes,” she said. “Bullshitting. You can bullshit like nobody I’ve ever seen.”
So I set out for a career in print journalism. After all, news writing is just B.S. with window dressing. So I was in college and had to take highfalutin classes like Historical & Philosphical Issues in Communication. I went by Mom’s house, had her look at my notes and quiz me for a test the next day.
“Hegel didn’t believe in God in the traditional sense,” I said, referring to the 19th century German philosopher.
"I bet he’s in hell,” she said.
“Who?”
“Hegel.”
“Well Mom, Hegel wasn’t an atheist. He just had an abstract idea of God as the ultimate reality. You have one viewpoint, countered by an antithesis and from there, the ideas merge into the synthesis and this keeps going on until you come to the ultimate idea, which is God. Marx was influenced by Hegel, but he didn’t think the ultimate idea was God. He thought it was communism.”
Nasty look from Mom.
We’d been going on with her questions and my long-winded answers about Locke, Rosseau, Hobbes, Hegel, Marx...for around two hours when I finally said, “I lied, Mom. The test isn’t tomorrow, it was today. I just wanted to show you how smart I am.”
She wasn’t amused. She doesn’t go for some of the things that make me laugh. My mother doesn’t like shows like South Park or The Simpsons. She once saw me watching this One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest-like skit on Saturday Night Live and thought it terrible that they would make fun of the mentally ill.
So you can understand my dilemma when I was dying to tell her this joke. It’s not like she was without a sense of humor, but so many things are taboo and off-limits. Should I chance it? I decided to go for it.
“Hey Mom," I said, "Did you hear that Ronald McDonald got arrested for child molesting? He tried to stick his big mac in a small fry.”
To my relief, and surprise, she burst out laughing. Then she called four or five of her friends and repeated the joke.
My mother was born with a phone attached to her ear. She also knows everyone in town and who they’re sleeping with. When gossiping, her voice takes on this hushed conspiratorial tone as she lets you in, saying, “Now don’t repeat this to anybody.” Never mind that she’s already told about five other people.
I always loved to call Mom and do my mediocre impersonations of celebrities. She was always cool with that except for that day in 1996 when the words, “…we the jury find Orenthal James Simpson not guilty” were spoken over televisions across the land. She picked up the phone – I’d just gotten home from work at the AC Traveler – and I said, “Vickie, this is O.J. Simpson.” Her response was a long diatribe of eight and ten-letter words.
“Mom, are you mad?” I asked.
“Hell yes, I ‘m mad. You don’t call me, saying you’re O.J. Simpson. They oughta’ cut off his nuts.”
Mom was nicer and played along when I would call, speaking in a high-pitched voice, pretending to be Michael Jackson. (One night, my wife, Liana, and I saw Michael Scott do this to Ryan on an episode of The Office. Liana turned to me and said, “See what kind of people do that stuff.") I retired the act when MJ died. No more jokes about “Jesus juice” and loving all little children. It didn’t seem right.
One death that did seem appropriate to joke about was Katherine Hepburn’s. I call Mom, imitating Hepburn’s shaky voice as she walks around Heaven. Then I did another voice -- Jimmy Stewart’s.
“Oh hi Katie, it’s been a long time. What’s that? Well gosh-- uh what's that –uh—you say you wanna’ have sex?”
Then I went into these long, warbled noises with intermittent sounds of “Oh Katie” and “Oh Jimmy.” (It’s much funnier when you hear it.) I then finished the act with the sounds of two Hollywood icons finishing and Mom at the other end of the phone, laughing her ass off.
“Well, I gotta’ say, Jeff, this is one of your better ones,” she told me.
I think she laughs more these days than ever. Ever notice how as your parents start acting more and more like old people, they also appear more mellow than you remember them as a kid?
It was a couple of years ago. My son, Sam, was 6 or 7 and Mom was talking so kind and gently to him, sounding so wise.
“You only have one life to live so make it a good one,” she said as he sat there quietly, looking like such a serious little man in his glasses. “You have one body so you want to take care of it. You want to eat right and brush your teeth, floss and use mouthwash.”
“Well Mom, I don’t think too many kids go for the taste of Listerine,” I said. “Maybe if they’re little alcoholics.”
“There’s children’s mouthwash,” she said as Sam nodded attentively. Then she stopped.
“You just got a look on your face that reminded me of your daddy when he was a little boy,” she told Sam. “Thank you for bringing that memory back for me.”
Dammit! There are so many things I would like to take back. Mean things I’ve said. So many times I’ve been selfish, intransigent, lacking in empathy. I wish I’d been a better kid, more appreciative. Perhaps every kid says this with regard to their parents. My kids will probably say it about me. Knowing that I would be entirely forgiving of them assuages some of my guilt as I’m sure Mom feels the same toward me.
Parents deserve a break after raising their kids. Now it’s my turn to do good things. When I have coffee and sweets with Mom at the Bake Shop or take her to the new boutique downtown (because women like that junk) it’s pretty cool. It’s a blast, taking time out with her and I’m never sorry I did it.
