I'm a Sucker for Anything Mother

I'm a sucker for anything mother, but first a little Thanksgiving humor, culled from the children's page of my new newspaper The Everett Herald, sorry The Daily Herald:

What do you get after eating too much turkey?  Dessert!

Mothers, my Mother, your mother, mothers in general:

I'm always touched by "Mother" talk. What people's memories are. How they were mothered or mother. I love listening to what gifts and surprises are being planned for mothers at holidays, Mother's Day, birthdays. When I hear good mother talk it brings me joy. Claire had a cute Facebook post this morning about Mothering Judy. And Jackie had an answer about Mothering Claire. I love mother talk.

Two colleagues lost their mother's this year. I understand the grief and pain this causes, but also the tangent joy of remembering. Remembering the good times, the friendship, of being mothered in our youth.

I guess it's reasonable to be thinking about mothers today since my Mother died on Thanksgiving Day in 1984. Thirty years ago and she is still an important part of my life. Besides all the love and acceptance she gave me, she had a wicked, sometimes warped, sometimes silly sense of humor. Christian was conceived during a trip to Disneyland so Mother really, really wanted me to name him Mickey. Yeah, that didn't happen. Can you imagine calling Christian Mickey? An unplanned pregnancy to an unwed mother wasn't an issue, but boy it sure would be fun to call him Mickey. Yeah, she was like that.

I swear she died on Thanksgiving Day on purpose so we would be forced to be thankful -- she was like that.

I know many have complex relationships with their mothers, but I didn't, and if she had a complex relationship with her Mother she kept it hidden. She always talked about our Grandmother Gilbert in glowing terms.

Books, poems, treatise, volumes, whole libraries are written about mothers. Bad mothers to saints, every portrait has been painted and I can't paint a new one. The love we have for our mother's might even surpass the love we have for our children. As Jeff said, When a mother dies we become orphans, no matter how old we are.

But I am thinking of mothers and wish I could write a portrait of mine. No one was ambivalent about her, she was loved or disregarded in just about equal measure with nothing in-between. I feel the same way a lot. Mother was poor, fat, funny, no formal education beyond high school, creative with very limited resources, lusty, lazy, unsure of herself in some social situations, the life of the party in others. Extremely wise.

She had big ole arms and could wrap you up in comfort or love or sheer joy, sitting next to you or talking thousands of miles away. She was like that. She would whoop with delight if she scored big in Scrabble or Dominoes. Moon, I think was the name of her game. I remember that. She would glow with pride over perfect hot rolls or angel food cake, she would laugh at cooking failures, cooking collapses. She loved to experiment; dinner plate size donuts, sauerbraten, guacamole when no one had even heard of it fifty years ago. She listened as Lonnie tried to describe it and how his Mother made it by squashing it with her molcajete. All new. And she did it to be nice to Lonnie, a lonely soldier a long way from his sunny Southern California home. A long way from his Mother. That was her big ole arms wrapping someone up in comforting love. Sometimes she smuggled an alcoholic beverage into our teetotaler home for some cooking experiment. That was mother.

She loved the unlovely, the undeserving. She buried her pride and humbled herself when she had to ask for help to feed her family. I can't imagine that she ever turned anyone away from her home, table or heart. Her religious beliefs were strong but flexible. No religious tenet could keep her from doing what her heart said was right. Yes, she had a dark side. She would get depressed, lonely, feel unlovely, sad, after all she was human with all the ups and downs life has to offer, but that is not her legacy. Her legacy is love.

Like I said, she loved her mother. Mother love going back to where? Moms, where would we be without them? With a gentle touch or a handy smack, Moms make the world go round. I love loving my Mother, I love being a mother, I love being a mother who is loved.

My favorite piece of art? Michelangelo's Pieta, of course.