I have certainly spoken of her before- some of these tidbits you may already know, some you don’t. Either way, my mother is a character like no other. She shaped and molded me into the strange being that I am today and I am forever grateful. How do you adequately say “Thanks for being such a fucking weirdo that I had to see the beauty or humor in things?”
Oh, I know. You divulge her secrets…….
She sings Christmas carols when she drives. All. Year. Long. When she doesn’t know the words, she makes them up.
Making hash brownies is probably illegal so my mother probably **cough** didn’t make them. The doberman then didn’t eat the entire pan and have to get her stomach pumped.
When I was in grade 7 we lived on ichiban noodles for half a year so she could afford to send me to Seattle for 5 days on a school trip. When it was my billets turn to stay with us, she borrowed money and stocked the house with cool lunchbox food so I wouldn’t be embarrassed.
She refers to one of my ex’s (still to this day) as the “good looking stupid one.”
She says “I love you” a million times a day and now that I’m an adult, she will still tickle my back when I sit next to her.
She steals hospital gowns & jam packages and thought her hospital stay after her heart attack was lovey. “It’s like I have maids and I just lay around all day.”
She bought all three of us water beds on a “no down payment, no interest until….. deal. The beds were for Christmas. It was July.
Buying pot in an alley in Hawaii would be illegal so my mother *cough* didn’t do that on the trip that her sisters paid for. The pot didn’t turn out to be a bag full of seaweed either.
We were all allowed to decorate our rooms in whatever fashion we saw fit. Even if that included spray paint and a shopping cart.
She routinely “bumps” other cars in parking lots and drives away.
She called me to tell me she’d had sex. She hadn’t had sex since my step father was killed in an accident 10 years earlier. I was happy for her.
Her casual attention raised over half of the kids in our neighborhood & I have never had a curfew. I have also never ever lied to her about important things because I never had to.
Since childhood she has always joked that if I ever get married she would like to show up dressed as a bag lady with a shopping cart and play the flute. (She doesn’t actually play the flute and I have never married.)
She without question, thought of my best friend Susin as her own child. She would sometimes drive us to soccer practice in the Easter Seal “short bus” that she drove as a part time job. When Susin hung out the window drooling & grunting like she was retarded my mother stopped the bus, walked back and slapped her across the face. I laughed so hard I almost peed my pants.
She let my 9 year old niece cut her hair because “it would be funny.”
She is forgetful and messy and financially irresponsible, but she will always make you laugh.
One of her part time jobs was at a fish truck. I was the poorest kid in school eating stolen shrimp & scallops for lunch.
When a hummingbird flew into our car she rolled up the windows to trap it and ran to get us so we kids could see it. By the time we got there the windows were covered in blood from it bashing itself to death in an effort to get out. “This is a dead hummingbird” is what she said.
Even though he cheated on her & rarely paid child support, she never made us hate our father.
When I was a toddler she was busted for shoplifting. She was stealing me an Easter dress.
She always, no matter what, has my back.
Thanks Momma. I love you up to the sky.
- The daughter.
xo
