Mother's Day Mom-isms

It's Mother's Day. Did you call your mom? Don't forget to call your mom! And if your mom isn't here anymore, don't forget to remember her.

In honor of Mother's Day, I decided to jot down a few thoughts concerning my own mom - nothing too personal, because I don't want her to kill me.

-Nobody messes with her kids. When I was about 15 years old, I'm fairly certain my mother wanted to give me away to the highest bidder - perhaps any bidder. I was a nightmare of a teenager, full of problems and flunking out of school. It's a good thing we didn't have eBay back then because my mom probably would have put me up for sale; however, even though she was probably wishing I wasn't carrying her genes, my mother would have gone Jack Bauer on anyone who tried to mess with me. Case in point: the evil home economics teacher who hated me and made it her mission to let me know on a daily basis. My mother made one little phone call to her and I don't know exactly what was said, but she was much nicer to me after that. As my mom has said many times over the years, "I'm the only one who's allowed to mess with my kids."

-She instilled her paranoia in me. Thunder is not dangerous; lightning is. But thunder makes more noise, and I was terrified of it as a kid. Unfortunately, so was my mom. So we huddled together, screaming our way through summer storms and often sat on the stairwell for protection. We laugh about that now because sitting on the stairwell would have only been effective had their been a tornado... and we had a basement, so we probably would have gone there. Also, bees were not something to be swatted away. Bees made my mother scream and run a hundred miles an hour in the opposite direction, which only made bees attack her more, which meant great entertainment for the entire neighborhood during the summer months. I once witnessed my mother trying to give directions to a man in the mall parking lot while sprinting and hurdling cars, waving her arms over her head like she was taking cover from napalm to get away from a bee. I got over my fear of storms rather quickly since my father countered her paranoia by standing in the middle of the front yard watching lightning strikes. It took me a lot longer to get over my fear of bees, though. Only recently have I discovered that honey bees won't bother you unless you're a flower, and that you should move away from hornets and wasps...slowly.

-There is no such thing as a quick voice mail. When I return a phone call from my mother, I usually already know everything there is to know before she even starts talking. Why, you ask? Because my mother leaves me 10-minute voice mails. It's never, "Call me back when you get a chance, bye." It's usually a recap of her entire day, followed by, "Call me back when you get a chance, bye." So I stopped listening to her voice mails because there was no more anticipation left. Now, when I call her, the first thing she asks me is, "Did you listen to my message"? and I say no and she gets mad. But at least the information is fresh. A few years ago, I saw a book promoted on "The Today Show" called Amy's Answering Machine about the hilarious messages a Jewish woman's mother would leave on her answering machine. It's my mom, minus the Jew.

-"I don't want this information spread around." My mother worries that I am going to spread the world's most mundane information around - mostly stuff nobody would care about, even if I told them about it with great passion in my voice and acted out the story with balloon animals and sock puppets. Sometimes, because I can't help myself, when my mother asks me if I've repeated some detail from one of her past stories, I'll tell her I blogged about it, and she always falls for it. I once told her, "Don't worry, Mom. I'm good at keeping secrets." She said, "Good." A second or two later she blurted out, "Wait, what does that mean?!"

-She likes Amy Grant. My mother used to refer to most of my music growing up as 'pots and pans being dropped in the kitchen.' A woman who was a teenager in the 1950s, when rock and roll music was in its infancy, my mother thinks the music of my generation is mostly crap. The one thing we could agree on, though, was Amy Grant. So much so that she asked me to get one of my t-shirts autographed for her when Amy was in town in March. This makes my mom awesome.

-She is good friends with my husband. Good in-laws are hard to find, but she found a good one in my husband, her son-in-law. My husband loves to pull pranks and practical jokes on my mother (who always falls for it), and my mother likes to enact revenge (which she did just last night). She confides in my husband sometimes and picks on him other times. Because my husband thinks my mom is such a hoot, he has no problem joking with her and my mom appreciates his warm, gentle personality. I can attest to the fact that sometimes in-law relationships can be a nightmare. I couldn't ask for more with this one, though.

She is MY good friend. I haven't always gotten along with my mother. In fact, there was a time when things between us were beyond terrible. I had a lot of resentment towards her, but I no longer do. My mom and I are good friends these days. We talk several times a week (twice that if you count the voice mails) and genuinely enjoy each other.  We have both been through difficult times in which we needed each other and I think it changed the dynamic of our relationship. I 'get' my mom where sometimes other people don't.

As you get older, you begin to realize things about your parents. You see the times they were there for you and you begin to realize that they did the best with what they had. You start to recognize that they are just people, like you, who make mistakes and face tough choices every day. I became friends with my mom the day I realized she was a human being, too. Sometimes I can hardly believe I'm in my 30s, and I can hardly believe my parents are getting up there in years. Where does the time go?

The best Mother's Day gift you could ever give your mom is deciding to use the time that's left to really get to know her, faults and all, because you only get one mom, and you only get so much time. Being able to make her squirm once in a while is just icing on the cake. :-) Pin It