For my mom

Here it is, Mothers Day, and I am reminded once again that I don’t have one. Well, I did have one, but she died when I was 12 of a massive heart attack brought on in no small part by the way she smoked and drank excessively for most of her adult life. I say this not so you will get the impression that my mom was a bad or weak person, because at least in my memory she was one of the greatest people I have had the pleasure of knowing. I say that so you will simply know a small fact about her to help round out the picture of this amazing person.

I can talk about these things with my wife, family members, and friends, and I do as often as the memories come to mind, but for some reason I just decided that I wanted to write this out as a tribute to my mom. She was something else.

There are many gaps in my memory regarding the first 10 years or so of my life, but when I think of my mom the first thing that comes to mind is that she never met a stranger. She was always able to make a “5 minute Best Friend” wherever she went. These were people who took our order at McDonalds, bagged groceries, or happened to be standing too close when she wondered out loud where the hell the mayonnaise was in this godforsaken store. I have this ability too – more than one helpful soul has helped me locate the goddamn mayonnaise - but I keep it turned off unless I am either really in need of something or really bored. She was always on.

I also remember that she had a mouth like a sailor on shore leave and never hesitated to throw out some expletive laded diatribe when something didn’t go right. “SHITFUCKPISSCUNTWHORE!” was the poetic cry of this damsel in distress, and it would come out for a wide variety of reasons - when she dropped a lit cigarette on her lap and was now slightly on fire, burnt dinner, cut her finger, or simply had enough of the noise my sister and I were generating. I even asked her about it one time when I was around 10.

“Mom, I know what shit, fuck, and piss are, but what’s a ‘cuntwhore’?”

These might be the first things that jump to mind, but they are by no means the most meaningful. There are obviously many meaningful things that I can remember – she was my mom and I would have to write for days to do justice to all the little things – but the thing that sticks out most was her total love for her kids. She used to bring my sister and I little things from the trips she had to take every now and then for work. She’d cheer me on when I was up to bat at little league games (and there was one memorable time when she got the whole crowd to chant my name when I had the chance to knock in the winning run, which I promptly did on the first pitch. That’s right - I was awesome.) She took care of my when I was sick.

There was a time in my life when I was taking medication for asthma which was, for all intents and purposes, adrenaline in a pill form. I had it pretty bad for a while and my doctor had prescribed that I take two of these pills a day, one in the morning (which was no problem – I needed a little pick me up many days as you will soon see) and one at night. The night pill was the worst. I would take it as directed around 7 pm and then proceed to spend the next five or six hours completely wired. Bedtime was around 8, so I’d spend a few hours staring at the ceiling, trying to go to sleep.

Did you ever try to go to sleep? Everyone knows how on Christmas Eve Santa doesn’t come until you fall asleep, and that the sooner you fall asleep the sooner Christmas morning comes. Kids around the world (at least those who believe in Santa and Christmas) spend hours on Christmas Eve, eyes closed, willing themselves to sleep. It never works. These kids spend most of the night worried that they won’t get to sleep in time and that Santa won’t come and that Christmas will be cancelled all because they can’t get to sleep and oh god it is now 11 o’clock and Santa was spotted by the local airport a few hours ago and he’s got to have moved on by now because he has to get to the ENTIRE world in one night and I’ll never get that Transformers toy that I so desperately want and I’ll have to wait another whole year which is really WAY too long and I might just have to go insane because by next year I might not even WANT the Optimus Prime and the milk and cookies and carrots will all be left out and the milk will sour and smell bad in the morning which will be just a GREAT thing to go downstairs to…etc.

I had several months straight of Christmas Eve’s in which I spent many hours each night with nothing much to do except lay in bed. I couldn’t play because my sister’s room was right next door and she’d wake up and tell mom and dad. I couldn’t go watch TV because the only set was downstairs in the basement and I’ll be damned if I was going to go down there all by myself, finished basement or not. Monsters don’t care if the floor is carpeted – in fact it is probably easier for them to sneak up on people because their footsteps are muffled.

Anyway, every now and then it would get to be too much for me and I’d venture into my parents room to tell them I couldn’t sleep. Surprisingly enough, my dad’s response didn’t help much. “You’ll never fall asleep wandering around the house – go back to bed!”

My mom, however, always took the time to give me a hug and walk me back upstairs where she would tuck me in and run her fingers through my hair or rub my back until I was relaxed enough to finally fall asleep. Some nights this was a short process, but other nights it would take 20 minutes or half an hour of this before I was able to sleep. She never seemed put out by this either. No matter how often it happened, she was always willing and able to get up out of her bed to take care of me.

I am now the proud father of 2 young boys who are wonderful in every way. (The littlest one, Ethan, has the ability to make these mind blowing poops that are so big they have their own gravitational pull, so that isn’t very wonderful, but aside from that, I have perfect kids.) It is the memory of my mom, waking up on a regular basis to deal with my insomnia problem, that comes to mind whenever I have to get up in the middle of the night to take care of one of my boys. I am not as willing to get up in the middle of the night as I remember my mom being, but I always try to put on a happy face when either of them calls so that whether I enjoy getting up at 3 am or not, my boys will always feel loved and cared for the same way I did when I was young.

She was great, and while I am sure I learned some bad things from her as well, I gained quite a few positive attributes from watching her over the years. Her memory lives on in my actions. I am who I am today in no small part because of her.