I'll never forget how my Mom...

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Yesterday I read the Cruel Punishments thread and boy was it depressing. So as a sort of antidote, I thought I put this one up here.

My Mom raised 6 kids by herself, 7 if you count another kids she adopted as her own the year I graduated form High School. We didn’t have much, sometimes it was a challenge just to put meals on the table, and she didn’t always win. Still my mother did things that just plain amazed me. A couple of things stick out:

One Saturday morning my mom got us up, insisted that we put on nice clean clothes, and marched us to the bus stop. She wouldn’t say where we were going, but said we’d enjoy ourselves. We arrived downtown, and instead of heading for the shopping stores, we walked a block or two and ended up at the movie theater. Fittingly the movie was Star Wars. It was one of the few times my Mom was able to treat us to something like that, and I’ve never forgotten it.

Another thing was winter-clothes. This was an area where my Mom always bought the best that she could afford. This particular winter we shopped later than usual, we’d already had a week or two worth of snow. My mom took us to Hudson’s to buy our winter boots one Saturday morning. She always bought us Jingles, they were heavy leather/suede and fur-lined and had little bells on the back for which they got the name.

What was different during that incident vs. previous years was that we had just moved into a new neighborhood, where my Mom was buying her first house. I had met a kid, who became by best friend, and because his family wasn’t doing to well, he was frequently at our house. He didn’t have any boots, that year. My Mom bought him some, without asking, just did it. The same as ours, even though she could have gotten the cheaper galoshes type boots most kids at school wore.

Sometimes when I feel like the world is out to get me, I remember how my Mom never stopped trying and was still generous enough to help other people. She’s quite a lady.

2

Whew! I was scared this was going to be about the Japanese studying for their “orals”.

Your Mom sounds like quite a gal. You have every right to be very proud.

I remember how we really didn’t have much money growing up for extra things like toys and stuff but that one time Mom gave my sister and I $20.00 each so that we could get something we really wanted for Christmas. Dad hit the roof because back then that was a lot but Mom stood firm. She’s done a million things like that but that one instance for some reason always stayed with me.

3

I’ll never forget how my Mom…

threw a knife at me.

But I sort of deserved it.

4

She threw a knife at you?!? :eek:

In that case, I’ll never forget how my Mom used the wooden end of a feather duster to spank me when I exhibited what, in her opinion, was bad behavior. I’ll also never forget how she used a wooden spoon once for the same purpose. Then there were all the times she made me kneel on the floor for a long time as punishment for something or other that I had done “wrong”.

But that’s taking away from the spirit of this thread, and I digress. (and apologize) On to the more positive sides of my mother…

I’ll never forget how she agreed to look after her friends’ baby when they were going away somewhere. (they had two older kids, and took them along) The baby stayed with us for about a week, and became really attached to my grandmother. In fact, he was so attached that when his parents came to get him, he didn’t want to leave! My mom didn’t have to do this for them; she had three children in the house already, and had no time to look after a baby. But she did it, and her friends appreciated it.

I’ll never forget how my mom took us all out downtown in the car or on the bus. I remember the day when she said that we were going to go downtown; at the time, it seemed like a new and exciting place. She made it seem so, instead of like a chore that had to be gotten through.

I’ll never forget her niceness to other people in her life. That has shaped me to be the nice person I am today, or been a contributing factor to my personality.

5

My mom made all my clothes. I was smaller than the rest of the kids and my clothes would have looked little-girlish, but my mom got the “older girl” patterns and cut them down, and picked out more mature prints and patterns so I wouldn’t look like a complete dork all the time. What a doll!

6

I’ll never forget funny things about my mom. She’s such a goofball. Like:

  1. The time my mom was cooking Thanksgiving dinner, and she opened the oven to baste the turkey. She leaned over the turkey, covering it with whatever you baste a turkey with, and pushed it back in the oven. When she stood up, the necklace that she had been wearing fell back against her neck. The temperature of that sucker must have been a zillion degrees, because my mother said words that would make a longshoreman blush. But, later, it was funny as hell, and now she laughs about it whenever we talk about it.

  2. The first time my mother heard me cuss. I was about 10 or 11 years old. We were watching some ice-skating thing on tv on a Saturday. My mom was reading, and I was half-heartedly paying attention to the tv. I can’t remember the skater who was making a ‘return to the ice’ in this particular show. She skated out on to the ice beautifully, then slipped, slid all the way across the rink and landed in the roses that were set up at the other end. I said, “Wow! Did you see that? She fell right on her ass and slid all the way across the ice!” My mother said, “WHAT DID YOU SAY?” and started laughing so hard that she came dangerously close to wetting her pants.

  3. pbrtallboy and I were hanging out at my mom’s house for some reason. We were sitting there, the 3 of us, watching the Discovery Channel or TLC, and they had a special about wild animals in Africa. They showed a dainty baby gazelle hopping around in the tall grass, and the scene lasted about a minute. He/she seemed so happy to be alive and bouncing all over the place. Then, out of nowhere, two jackals came from either side, grabbed half the gazelle, and ran in opposite directions. This happened in the space of about 3 seconds. pbr, my mom and I all stared at each other for about 10 seconds in utter amazement, then we busted out laughing. I know it was one of those ‘you had to be there’ things, but it was so friggin’ unexpected that it was funny.

7

My mom is a fun mom; kind of like Lorelai from Gilmore Girls, but not irritating or shrill.

My mom loves old movies, and by forcing me to watch them from a very young age she cultivated an interest in film in me that was not typical for the average American girl. We used to act out scenes from our favorites, like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers or Auntie Mame; she would always be Rosalind Russell or Howard Keel and sing their solos.

The best ever: The infamous “wire hanger” scene from Mommy Dearest. She would grab a hanger and chase me around the house, screaming “No wire hangers, ever!!!” and I would pretend to shriek and cry hysterically.

She also would take me out to lunch and shopping and concerts and clubs, letting me ditch school whever I wanted. She offered to let me drink with her, had no qualms about smoking marijauna (not around me), and gave me permission to get a tattoo on my 16th birthday (didn’t do it). All that lack of discipline created the most strait-laced, normal daughter that she never hoped for. :slight_smile:

8

I’ll never forget Sundays with my mom. Every Sunday until I was about twelve I went to work with her at Goldsmiths. She taught me how to run the register, allowed me to do the scutwork, and the best part–I got to dress the baby mannequins! She always took me to Woolworth’s cafe for lunch, where I got the thrill of sitting at the counter and watching the old lady cook at the grill. I was fascinated!
I always got to try on clothes, and she would stick them in a drawer until they went on sale. I’m sure there was a rule against that, but hey, she made 70 bucks a week and raised two kids alone.
I will also never forget how all the kids in the neighborhood came to our house to watch Memphis State basketball games and Saturday Morning wrestling. Of course I got jealous when she drew more attention from the guys, but it was all very Mom-like attention. Everybody loved her.
I’ll also never forget how soft the underneath of her long fingernails felt. I loved putting her hand over mine and pretending they were my hands.
I’ll also never forget how beautiful the day was…how she smiled and said she loved me, just like every day…the day before she passed away.

9

I’ll never forget how when I decided I was too old to sleep with a teddy bear any more my Mom made up a little bed just for him with a baby blanket and assured me he’d be quite comfortable there. She was raising six kids by herself but she still had time for us like that. I was, and am, quite impressed.

To this day, she still knows what to do or say to make us feel better.

Wow. :slight_smile:

10

Another good Mom thread.

11

Oh, but there are so many to choose from.

My mom is a semi avid Golfer, and you know how golfers can get when they make a mother&%&*# bad shot. She just watches the ball go skipping away in the wrong direction, jumps up and down and says (and I quote) “BAD WORD, BAD WORD, BAD WORD!” She then got in the cart, and proceeded to her ball.

Another instance was she had picked me up early from middle school for some reason or another, and we ended up getting behind a School Bus which had some of my friends on it. They were all like trying to be sneaky about giving us the finger (acting like they are itching their eyes, rubbing their faces, etc.) so my mom looked at me, winked, and stuck her hand out the sunroof, with middle finger a-blazin’! It was great. All my freinds the next day were telling me how cool my mom must be.

There are so many more, but I don’t have the time (or the mental capacity) to go through them all.

12

I loved my mom so much. We had a few bad years, [sub]well maybe I should make that a bad decade.[/sub] But we finally got things sorted out and had a great relationship. I loved and adored her, and she became my hero once I figured out what was what and why she was the way she was and parented the way she did.

Anyway, in 1992 I had a bad auto accident. I broke my pelvis in three places and really should have been dead…I wasn’t, though…(obviously) but there I was in the hospital, with my Doc refusing to discharge me until I had someone to take care of me. I wasn’t able to take care of my self.

Now I had lived alone at this point for many years, and the thought of going to live with my parents again struck terror in my heart. I just knew it was going to be awful, and we would fight and they would annoy me and all the wonderful relationship stuff we had worked out would be ruined because I moved “home” for awhile. But since I didn’t have any choice, I moved “home.” I planned to stay only as long as I couldn’t drag myself up the stairs to my bedroom in my OWN house. Even if I could crawl, I was going “home” the minute I could even marginally take care of myself. I was, after all, independent and self sufficient, and had been for many years. I knew that I needed my space, and I wasn’t going to be comfortable until I was back in my own home, living alone where I was happy. I particularly knew that I was going to be miserable under my parents roof once again.

Well, I lived there for one month. They cared for me, carted me to work and back once I was able to be there for a few hours a day, fielded my calls (how mom knew who was going to be helpful to me and who was going to cause a relapse is beyond me, but somehow she JUST KNEW…and she was NEVER wrong…so there you have it) She held me up while I tried to get dressed and the pain was so bone deep that I cried out in pain. (Dad threw pans around in the kitchen during THAT fun stuff.) We played dominos, Scrabble and just sat around and giggled at the TV. We watched old movies on AMC. We talked about…nothing, really, but somehow it turned out to be discussions about REAL things. We had a WONDERFUL time.

One day I realized I could take care of myself again, and my Doc concurred. So on a sunny Saturday morning, I gathered up my stuff and moved home. That was about 10AM. I got settled at home and then sat there, feeling weird…until it occurred to me that I was LONELY! I hadn’t really been lonely for YEARS, not the kind of lonely I am talking about. I don’t suppose you know what I am talking about. Anyway, at noon the phone rang and it was my mom. “Honey, have you eaten lunch?” No, mom, I haven’t eaten lunch. “Well, you might as well come up for lunch, you don’t have to stay.” So I went, visited a bit, and came home. Around 7PM the phone rang. “Honey, have you eaten dinner?” No, mom, I haven’t eaten dinner yet. “Well, you might as well come up and have dinner, dad and I are making spaghetti, and there is plenty for you.” I went. We ate dinner, visited a bit and watched “North to Alaska” on AMC. Had a wonderful evening.
I went home to bed.

Next morning, 9AM. Phone rang. “Honey, have you eaten breakfast?” No, I hadn’t eaten breakfast. “Well, you might just as well…” I WANTED TO GO! I couldn’t believe it! I said to her, “Mom, we are going to have to cut the cord again, you know?” She said “I never EVER cut the cord, honey, I just allowed it to stretch.”

I always loved my mom. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized how VERY much I LIKED her! She and my dad were/are AWESOME people. And this is only one of many stories I could tell you…

I was and am a very VERY lucky girl.

13

I’ll never forget how my mom:

…behaved like a mom. My friends still call her Mrs. Shrew. No first names. No embarrassing tagalongs with my friends and me. No “I want to be your friend” crap. Just a good old fashioned mom.

…knew instinctively, to the week, that I had learned what sex really was.

…never pressured me to make good grades, but only said, “If this is your best, and you’re proud of these grades, then so are we.”

…makes my favorite meals when I’m there.

…stayed with me for two days after a surgery four years ago. She fed me and tended my bandages. She even did my laundry before she left.

…always worried whether I had good school shoes.

…never failed to be at every school function, but understood if I told her it wasn’t necessary.

…still lets me lie on the couch with my head in her lap.

…bought me a fur coat my 4th grade Christmas. It was ruined within a week by a boy at school, and she never said a word.

…let me go to Europe my senior year in high school because she knew I had earned it.

…kept her rocky marriage together because she knew our father had more good in him than bad.

14

I’ll never forget how my mom use to slap the help around.

Just kidding. We never had any “help”.

15

I’ll never forget how exemplary my mom’s reaction to my coming out was, nor how she kept it from my dad for eight months when I asked her to, nor how I felt when I saw her at the Pride parade, in one of her good dresses, with her “I (heart) my gay son” button on.

16

I was fine till this line. Then the dam broke.

17

I will never forget how Mom:

who was a complete goody two shoes church lady told me this poem the other day
Little miss muffet sat on her tuffet
eating her curds and whey
along came spider and sat down beside
And said whats in the bowl Bitch
I was completely floored, because My mom never cusses like that and is always the strict authoratarian

18

I am so sorry, this is such a good memory for me… it didn’t occur to me that it might seem sad to other people. My heartfelt apologies.