Mother

This won't be so much an article as it is just plain old fashioned musings. My heart and head are in a different place today and I just feel like talking. I hope that is OK.

If anyone were to ask me what is my biggest accomplishment in life, I would't hesitate for a minute. It's being a mother. I am very proud of my mothering skills and actually most everything else I have done in this life. OK, there was that one weekend in New Jersey all those years ago that wasn't my proudest moment, but the the statute of limitations for throwing up in someone's car console was up a long time ago.

With Mother's Day just around the corner, it brings up so many memories and quandaries all at the same time. My kids will be asking what I want to do. They won't want me to cook so that means going out to a crowded restaurant. Ugh. I just want to be with them. I want to be with my kids, their spouses and their kids. But then guilt sets in. Two of my daughters are mothers themselves. Maybe they would just like to hang out at home with their families. It's a dilemma. It's not that I don't want to celebrate the day or be worshiped by my children, but I don't want to take anything away from my daughters.

It's kind of a bittersweet day anyway, since my own mother is now gone. The ads on TV and the emails in my mailbox suggest that we mothers would like some tulips or chocolate or one of those seersucker zip-up gown thingies to lounge around in. The list of gifts I would like begins with help to clean my garage and ends with tickets to see the Rolling Stones when they go on tour next fall. I am not your typical mother or grandmother.

I don't go to the cemetery to visit my mom. For many, the cemetery is a happy place for folks who have lost their loved ones. Not for me. My mom was just the right amount of crazy. She could have given Lucy Ricardo tips on how to get into trouble. I remember fondly when I was a kid and our local fancy-dancy gift shop had a counter full of wind up alarm clocks for ladies' bedrooms. This was a lot of years ago, so stick with me if you don't remember clocks that had to be wound every day. There must have been 2 or 3 dozen clocks on display. My mother picked up each and every one of them while keeping the sales staff at bay with her "just looking" comments. I didn't pay much attention to what my mother was doing. I was just glad to be with her. Later that day at a few minutes before 6 p.m., my mom called the gift shop and asked for some help with an alarm clock she had seen earlier. The call was transferred and my mom was connected with a saleslady in that department. As she began to talk, a couple of dozen alarm clocks went off at the same time. My mother could not contain her delight. She had set them all to 5:55 p.m. just for fun. I probably told you this story before, but it's one of my faves. She did that kind of stuff every once in a while. It recharged her devilish side and was always amusing. Those are some of the best memories of my mom. Or the time my dad took a nap in the afternoon and she painted his toenails bright pink while he was fast asleep. One year there were sparklers left over from the fourth of July and she lit them and stuck them in the Thanksgiving turkey when she brought it from the kitchen to the table. She made life fun, so to sit by her grave just doesn't give me comfort. To short sheet someone's bed would be a better way to honor her.

One of the saddest times of my life was when my mom was fading and I wanted so desperately to ask her how she made particular dishes. Her cooking was remarkable and she never measured or wrote anything down. I never could bring myself to ask her any of the recipes I loved so much, because I didn't want her to think I was asking her these things before she died.

I still struggle to duplicate her fine cooking. She never used anything pre-made or fake. I remember one time when she looked into my refrigerator and saw light butter, light mayonnaise and light salad dressing among other "LITE" versions of food. She was in disbelief and shut the refrigerator door immediately exclaiming that it was a wonder we didn't all just float away with all that light food. My mommy was a complete character with a lot of character. I am so her daughter in so many ways. I miss her.

My mother was always so proud of me. She raised me to have good manners and social graces. She sent me to Cotillion to learn the Waltz and Foxtrot and proper behavior in a social situation, but I loved her madly anyway. She made sure I went to the best private schools and was taught French. I can conjugate French verbs like a champ to this day, but it doesn't do me a lot of good living in a state that is 50% Spanish speaking.

I know she thought I would grow up and marry Prince Charles and that would be it. Somewhere the plan went askew and I ended up selling crotchless panties for a living. (By the way, Spell-check kept insisting I meant "toothless panties" and fought with me to change it. I won.) She lived long enough to see my LoveFifi dream come true. She was proud of me and often commented that Prince Charles didn't turn out to be such a great husband anyway. It all turned out well.

So to all my mothers and grandmothers out there, I hope you have plans for a wonderful day on May 10th. My day will be a good one and all my kids will be there, I am sure. The good thing is that they tell me all year long what a great mother I am and how much they love me. I am one lucky lady.

Stayin' Alive

As I hunker down in the bliss of middle age, there is one thing that has become extremely clear to me: I am very lucky to be alive. I have been babysitting my grandkids fairly regularly lately and though I figured that I was pretty good at mothering, it's a lot different now. I grew up in dangerous times and didn't even realize it until I became a grandmother. I raised my own children like I was raised. I thought my parents did a pretty good job with me, so I carried on their work with a few upgrades.

As I was strapping my 2 1/2 year old granddaughter into her car seat the other day, it all hit me as to how lucky I was to be walking this earth. I am pretty sure I didn't have a car seat or even seat belts when I was young. Oh, I take that back. I did have a seat belt. It was called Mom. When she had to hit the brakes suddenly, she would throw her extended arm across me to keep me from being hurled into the air. I don't think that kind of protection would prove effective in today's crash tests, but I am still here to tell the story.

When my grandson rides his bike or his scooter, he wears knee pads and a helmet. When I look back, I rode a bike and roller skated on the city streets without any kind of head gear or padding, I am astonished that I made it to this age. My younger sister skated too and she wasn't as good as I was and was prone to falling down pretty often. Obviously, Mom was ahead of her time in the field of childhood safety, because even though she never thought about protecting my sister's head, she started belting a bed pillow to sister's back side when we went outside to skate down the sidewalks. The pillow trick worked really well because my sister's butt was unharmed and is flourishing to this day.

Come to think about it, I am closer to being a senior citizen than a debutante, so how did I escape death when I grew up on white bread? I even ate Velveeta and Spam and I am here to talk about it. I don't eat it anymore, but I can assure you that in my youth I had my fill of gluten and trans fat. I am pretty sure that an Omega 3 oil never crossed my tongue as a kid unless it was found in fish sticks. Growing up, the closest I ever came to eating organic was when I decided to taste one of the mud pies I had created in the yard.

Thank goodness my brain was never corrupted from watching television in my early years. Although there was no such thing as Parental Control to block me from watching unfit things, there weren't actually a lot of unfit things on TV back then. How much trouble could Gilligan really get into to that I would need to be shielded from?

It's a miracle that I lived to be this old because I was spanked within an inch of my life for misbehaving. Kids today are not spanked or slapped anymore. Even if they try to touch something dangerous or run into the street, corporal punishment is considered wrong. Now parents discuss the wrong-doing with the child and make contractual agreements with 5 year olds about the consequences if the infraction should ever occur again. I was slapped on occasion, spanked from time to time and otherwise punished in addition to being put in solitary confinement to think about what I'd done. How did I ever escape childhood relatively unscathed?

And to think I played with cap guns, and pogo sticks and jump ropes. I could have been burned or impaled or strangled for goodness sake! I faced so much danger and yet... I made it.

I had mumps and measles and chicken pox and, except for the permanent little hole in my forehead from that spot I couldn't stop scratching, I came through all of it.

I feel very fortunate to have lived through so much despite the fact that I didn't have anything to keep me safe and healthy. I am one lucky lady.

Miss Fifi has yet another gift to be thankful for in this life... The privilege of getting older.