A blog I wrote about my mum

I love my mother. She is wonderful. I have never met another person like her; she just marches to a different beat from most of the people in this world. She speaks in sort of a breathy, sing-songy voice. Friends have said she sounds like she's on a 1-900 line.

She has conversations inside her head in the middle of conversations with other people. She'll mutter "What a *****" during a discussion about babies. We can be sitting in silence, and suddenly she will say, "and you know what he did then?" Her lips often move while I talk to her. She's having a sideline conversation with herself on a different subject. I'm used to it.

She's obsessed with loons -- their calls, their monogamous relationships and protecting their environment. She also adores dolls. Whenever I buy her a hideous china doll with "realistic facial expressions" and "authentic period costume" I have to swallow my disgust and remind myself she's going to LOVE it.

My parents are granolas. (Their idea of a treat when I was little was a piece of licorice bark. It was just like chewing on normal bark except it tasted somewhat like licorice.) They're hippies without the drugs. However, many people find it hard to believe that mum abstains from drugs (even though she does; she won't even touch alcohol). Apart from the munchies, she consistently exhibits all the behaviours of someone who smokes a big spliff a couple of times a day.

Here's a quote from a voicemail she left for me:
"Hi honey. It's your father caling. [LONG PAUSE] I mean... your mother!"

One day at work she got the receptionist to track me down because she needed to speak with me URGENTLY. I ran to the phone in a panic thinking something horrible had happened to dad and here's what mum said to me: "Honey, I'm baking and I don't know if I should use almonds or pecans." I hung up on her and had a little temper fit in my office. This past week, she had me tracked down at work to ask me the name of a lingerie shop. I said, "I told you not to call me at work unless it's an emergency." She responded, "This IS an emergency. I need a new bra!"

On the subject of work, my mother doesn't enjoy working. We had very little money when I was a kid and my dad worked a lot of crappy jobs to keep a roof over our heads, but mum would not work outside the house. "I refuse to stand on my feet and get varicose veins!" was her reason. I thought she was saying VERY CLOSE veins and I decided that I would have a sitting down job when I grew up so I wouldn't get very close veins. They sounded dangerous and liable to burst and cause death by mass hemorrhage.

She didn't do much work inside the house either. The house was always a mess. If she cooked dinner, it was burnt or undercooked. My grandmother (who was a nasty, hateful woman) used to say, "Your mother has always been lazy. She dragged herself around on her arse until she was 4 because she couldn't be bothered walking." She's not lazy, though. She's very active. She has always spent a lot of her time swimming and playing tennis and walking with the dog on the beach. When I was a kid, my dad referred to her as the "Princess in Poverty." (To her credit, she still has a fabulous body and looks great at 63.) One day, she got a sudden surge of housecleaning energy and polished all the furniture with Pam non-stick cooking spray. We were a little suspicious of dinner that night -- checking for a lemon flavour -- wondering if our burnt stir-fry had been cooked in Pledge.

My mum is very mellow and my dad is the opposite. On car trips, my sister would usually end up screaming, "Mum, she's looking at me!" and I would reply with "Mum, she's pinching me!" (I never understood why my sister had such a huge problem with being looked at.) My dad would get fed up, bang his fist on the steering wheel and yell, "I'M GOING TO PULL THIS DAMN CAR OVER AND KNOCK YOUR TWO HEADS TOGETHER!!!" Mum would say something like, "No one's getting their head knocked. Let's all sing YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE," and then she'd start singing or else she'd ask "Who wants a stick of Juicy Fruit!!?!"

My mother has an interesting way of pronouncing some words. When I was a kid, I thought that grilled cheese sandwiches were GIRL cheese sandwiches (made especially for me because I was a girl). My chest of drawers was CHESTER Drawers (he was closely related to Chester Field.) I wore LEG ENDS (leggings) when it was cold outside. They were called LEG ENDS because I had to pull them over the ends of my legs (my feet) in order to put them on. We've tried to teach her to pronounce "moustache" but she still says MUSHTASH... and Saturday is SAYERDEE. She has trouble remembering names too. My brother and sister and I got used to answering to the names of our aunts or uncles or dogs or cats. I was usually JudyAndreRichardRimsky!

When I was a child, I went through a period of time where I was convinced that I was adopted. The only flaw in my theory was that I look like a pale, female version of my dad. I was sure that my mother could not be my mother, though, because we had nothing in common.

She gets extremely offended when drivers slow down their cars to look at her while she's gardening in the front yard. We are constantly reminding her it's because she's wearing a bathing suit and has 34DD breasts. Her tops are always stained because she forgets about her boobs and puts them in her plate at almost every meal.

A few years ago she had a breast cancer scare. It was very worrisome for all of us. She called me one night to tell me she was CERTAIN she had cancer because she was finding more hair in her hairbrush than usual. That's when I told her that it's chemotherapy, not cancer, that causes hair loss. She was very relieved... and we were all relieved when we found out the lump was benign.

She loves making crafts. They're always messy, but she puts her heart into them. One Christmas she made me a scrapbook called MOTHER REMEMBERS. Halfway through it, she started referring to me as her granddaughter. There is a particularly long passage about one of my birthday parties. She writes about how much fun it was -- with a WINNIE THE POOP cake and pin the tail on WINNIE THE POOP and lots of other WINNIE THE POOP-related activities. She did throw the best birthday parties in the neighbourhood.

She recently learned how to use e-mail. She went to secretarial college when she was a teenager, but since then she has always made dad do all her typing for her. Her reasoning? She forgot how to type after graduation and dad was a prize-winning Army teletype operator in the early 60s. (My dad spends a lot of his time sniffing loudly and muttering, "That WOMAN!") He has finally put his foot down, so now she does her own typing and e-mailing. Messages from her inevitably have the first letter of each sentence in lower case and the rest of the sentence in ALL CAPS. She always identifies herself as my mother just as she does on the phone (except for those times when she identifies herself as my father).

When I was 18 and announced to her that I had been accepted to the university of my choice, she was shocked. Even though I was always at the top of my class, it had never occurred to her that I would go to university. "But you're pretty and you're such a good typist!!" was her reaction. I was a graphic designer for 10 years, but she still doesn't know quite what a graphic designer DOES.

I only got grounded once in my life and it was for being sarcastic to my mother when I was 16. I was astounded when my father grounded me. I learned my sarcasm from him. Making fun of mum was and still is a family tradition. It's something that brings us all closer together and mum's good at laughing at herself. One of her aunts has Alzheimer's Disease and mum was voicing her concern during Christmas Dinner -- afraid that she will get it too. My dad reassuringly told her, "Sweetheart, don't worry. If you got it, no one would notice the difference." Later, she mentioned that she would love to learn French. My sister responded with, "Don't take on too much, mum. You're still trying to learn English." Ba-dum-bump! Mum laughs at this stuff too.

So, that's my mother. She's one in a million. Nope... one in 6 billion. She infuriates me sometimes, but she makes me laugh. She never yells and she believes in praising, not criticizing. (So, it's her fault I have such a huge ego.) She has infinite patience and love for children and animals. She would rather be playing with her grandchildren than doing just about anything else. She always smells like tomatoes fresh off the vine (and I don't know why) but I love that smell. She's one of the kindest and most compassionate people I know. I don't know what I would do without her.

Wow ... you are a wonderful writer. You had me giggling at my puter :>

Yo mummy sounds gorgeous

tears........i miss my mom a lot now.............we had her 92 years and even her bad moments look good now. i'm glad you still have yours..........you're delightful! xoxoxo pat

You are blessed to have such a wonderful mum and the gift of writing. I totally enjoyed your blog! I'm smiling!!!!!! LOL

Thanks so much for sharing

Hugsssssssss
J

Fabulous description of your mother. So glad to have these images of her.

Thanks for the kind words everyone. My mum and dad are very precious to me (and so are my sis, my bro, my nieces and my nephew).

I'm sorry you lost your mother fayerody. I can only imagine how much you miss her. (((Hugs)))) I know that my parents won't always be with me, but I hate thinking about them not being here. Losing them is one of my biggest fears. I know that even when they're gone, though, they will be with me. Their presence, influence and love are too strong to ever go away. I hope I don't have to face losing them any time soon though. I want them to live forever.