The Appendix Cure for Lying

Posted on August 29, 2013 by cloverhays

As I get older, I find I have no tolerance for liars and no ability to tell lies. (Actually, I have little tolerance for lots of people, but that’s another blog.) Of course, things are easier the older I get because I don’t get into as much mischief. If I do something, I just say “bam, I did that” and deal with the consequences.

As a teenager, though, I was … naughty. By this I mean, if it was fun, I did it, and then found a way to get out of trouble later. I learned such a lesson in lying when I was 17 that it should have cured me for good. Except for the occasional fib to The Goose about the cost of some shoes, or a slight slip over an incident with the car, I’ve been pretty dang truthful all of my adult life.

When I was 17, one weekend, my parents were going out of town. I told them I would stay with my friend. What I didn’t say was that her parents were out of town as well. My poor parents swallowed the whole story, sweet trusting people that they were. When I left for school on Friday morning, I kissed the folks goodbye and set out for a Ferris Bueller weekend in the extreme. My good mother, however, noticed that I had left my gas credit card at home and worried that I might run out of gas. So, being the kind hearted person she was, she brought it up to school. I was not at school. I was elsewhere, already embarking on the road that leads straight to Hell. So, in this way, the school was alerted to my absence. Since this was before cell phones, I was left to believe that all was well.

That night was something from an 80s movie montage in that it involved a Ferrari, an accident, a cute boy, turquoise satin pants and a lesson in Spanish. It encompassed checkerboard sneakers, large hair, Taco Bell and no seat belts were worn whatsoever. Those of you who were teenagers in the early 80s, you might have lived a version of this weekend too. Things were just more fun then.

I lived through it, barely, and even managed to screech in Saturday morning just in time to get to school to take my SAT. While I believe I probably did well on the first few problems, I then put my head on my desk and slept through the rest. Final SAT score, 400. The next night was tamer than the first, but only marginally. On Sunday afternoon, as I drove myself to youth group at church, worn out, hung down, achy, I told myself I really should be better. I would be better! By golly, I would be a good girl, complete with pleated skirts, Peter Pan collars and loafers. The visual of myself as “good girl” caused mad fantasies where I helped winos off the street and saved kittens from trees. I would be like a nun! As I sat in choir practice, I congratulated myself on my thoughts to do so.

Then, in the tiny glass window, I saw my mother’s face. It’s round magenta countenance filled the window completely and conveyed such malevolent intent that I almost climbed under my chair. I still do not know how she found out some things, and thankfully, she didn’t know half of what I’d been up to, but she was set on destroy mode and I was in the crosshairs. She had my dad in tow to drive my car that she was threatening to sell and as I followed her rapidly clicking heels out of the church, I knew even he, usually understanding of the wayward, couldn’t save me.

On the drive home, in a Hail Mary of Biblical proportions, I mentioned that my stomach hurt. I said it was killing me. I might have just as easily said my head or back, but I chose stomach. I really laid it on and moaned and begged her to stop being mad. To forgive. To understand. She was a sucker for a sick kid and I thought I had her, but she suddenly veered off the main road and drove me directly to my pediatrician’s house. She grabbed me by the upper arm and marched me into his living room, across his sculptured carpet, instructed me lie down on his plastic covered sofa and then proceeded to dare the poor man to find anything wrong with me. If our doctor was surprised to see us at his house, one look at my mother caused him to close his mouth and fein interest in my condition. I continued with the ruse, now in such hot water that I feared juvenile incarceration if I stopped, and so I moaned at all the appropriate times. If he pushed, I wailed. He suggested we go straight to the hospital.

Now it was getting serious. I began to think. If I told the truth, I would not see the light of day for years. The worst that could happen is that she would have time to cool down, see me in a dire medical setting and all would be forgiven. Nothing prompts a mother’s love and concern more than seeing a child in the ER.

After waiting for hours, I realized that it would be too late when we got home for me to go to school the next day. One problem down, no visit to the principal’s office. Upon examination, which included the kind of x-rays where they strapped me to a table and turned me upside down, a doctor came in and announced that they would be removing my appendix that night.

That’s when it all came out. I admitted I’d been lying, I cried, I howled, I confessed to being the worst daughter ever, and my mother just hugged me and told me not to be scared, it wouldn’t hurt a bit. I prosthelytized from the gurney, I wailed and gnashed my teeth, but she told me she was sorry she hadn’t believed me right from the start. She said she loved me and tearfully left the room.

Then, they wheeled me out and cut me open. Uh huh. No matter how much I insisted I’d made the whole thing up, medical personnel just smiled and patted me.

I’d like to say I learned a lesson right then and there. The terrible thing is, at 17, I didn’t. I only received a tiny scar. I spent the week in the hospital, receiving flowers and gifts, hugs and sympathy, boyfriends and friends milling around the bed, and never had to see the principal.

As an adult, I am flabbergasted at myself and the surgeon. I never thought about the consequences, never thought how much it would cost my parents. I have relived this over and over, stupefied that this could have happened.

Years later, I told my mom everything. The irony is that she still didn’t believe me and that’s where the lesson came in. I hate the thought that someone believes something about me that’s not true, good or bad. The thought that my mother didn’t believe me, even as an adult, was terrible. I am what I am and, good or bad, I’d rather someone believe ME, not just an image of me.

If this has taught me anything, I believe it might be that the worst thing about lying is someone might believe you. Well, that, and cherry colored drink stains never come out of satin and never, ever, believe a boy in a Ferrari, “borrowed” or otherwise.

How’m I doin?

Posted on May 11, 2013 by cloverhays

The Golden Goose and I just spent a week in beautiful Exuma, in the Bahamas. I know, poor me. All that spare time caused me to do three things, drink too much, get too much sun and think. While I should have been enjoying brain dead time gazing at the florescent blue water, my mind whirled.

One night, I awoke at 3:00 am, the time when everything in the world is wrong. Suddenly, I needed to know that my kids, who were free wheeling at home alone, were okay. For years Cricket has been in charge of The Boy. My friends who travel with me joke that I’ve been leaving The Boy home alone since the 7th grade. This isn’t strictly true. Cricket has always been in charge and has been fully able to run a small country since the age of 6. I never worry that things will run smoothly when she’s in charge. The Boy, however, tends to go AWOL, ignore texts, failing to email or check in. Thus, I suddenly panicked at 3:00 that I was a terrible mother.

I prodded The Goose and asked him if he was awake. I told him I couldn’t stop thinking. This produced a sarcastic laugh and he told me he thought he smelled smoke.

“Am I a terrible mother?” I wailed. “Have I gone wrong by being so trusting? I mean, what could a 16 year old boy get into while home alone?”.

So The Goose and I got to talking about mothers. The Goose was left to walk himself to school in Kindergarten. He got himself ready and took himself to school. I, on the other hand, was driven door to door in an armored car. That’s the difference in a 4th child and an only child. We have long exhausted the subject of my happiness with my own perfect mother as well as my delight at finding such a groovy wonderful birth mother. This subject has been inspected, turned around, talked about and diagrammed. I just have happy mother issues and am covered up with great mother feelings from all sides.

Things moms say make a big dent in who we become. My mom never went to the grocery store without full make up and lipstick. Because of her, I know what’s tacky, what’s acceptable and what’s “done right”. I know children shouldn’t say “yeah” or “huh”, that legs really should be crossed at the ankles and that if an artificial nail comes off in the cotton candy at a school festival, one should look the other way and pretend it was someone else. I know from her that the we are in a constant war with germs and should be ever vigilant with the Lysol, that there are peeping toms waiting around every corner and that women who color their hair bright red usually can’t be trusted. Cricket recently had shoes that hurt and when she started to complain about it she held up a hand at me and sighed, “I know, one has to suffer for beauty. You’ve been telling me since I was a toddler”. I had no idea she even listened and my heart swelled because I’d passed that one right on from my mom.

The Goose’s mother was decidedly different. Although she had many great qualities, she wasn’t a lovey-dovey mother or grandmother. “Did you feel properly mothered?” I asked him. The Goose answered that he was perfectly happy with his mom. Although she was not a very loving person, he always felt as if she would be there if he needed her. Maybe this is what counts, having kids secure enough to know that there is someone there to be their safety net. The Goose’s mom had several important pieces of wisdom to impart. Frequently, when he was a teenager, she would say to him “a penis has no conscience”. When asked how she felt, she would often answer with “well, I feel like I do now better than I did when I first got here…but don’t tell anyone” or some convoluted version thereof. She called having a bath a “Clara Barton” and named her end table “Abnot”. These oddball sayings have become dear to us since she’s been gone and I find myself thinking about the quirks she had and how they helped to form the great Golden Goose that I have now. Surely she was the perfect mother for him.

The other day I wrapped my arms around The Boy and asked him if he felt happy with me as a mother. Did he feel he could always depend on me? This caused him to laugh and say, “Well, Mom, you ARE a total pushover but you are a great mom.”

“What about all those Bible songs we listened to in the car when you were little? That was pretty darn respectable. Remember how much we read and how we played in the creek?”.

“I remember you read “Are You My Mother” over and over to me because you thought it was funny that it made me cry.”

“Okay, but I was strict enough with the rules that you are a good kid now”.

“I remember when you whacked the daylights out of my head with a giant sucker” he replied.

How long I’ll pay for that particular miscalculation, I don’t know. They never forget.

“Well, what about when I was your room mom?”

“Sure, that’s back when you were allowed in the school.” This referring to the fact that I am, mysteriously, not asked to sub anymore.

“Uh, huh, well, I gave you my great car.”

Finally, then I received a hug and some reassurance that he was, indeed, happy with me as a mom.

Both moms and dads shape who our kids will become. Cricket never walks into the house without The Goose yelling “you da bomb, baby!”. She, in turn, rolls her eyes. Every single game of The Boy’s life, whether he does well or fails, I have told him, “you were definitely the cutest one out there.” While there have been groundings and spankings, plenty of yelling, mainly over math, and several slammed doors and temper tantrums, my kids never have to guess how much they are loved.

And so, I sought out The Boy, who had so recently called me “a pushover” (which I very well may be), looked him in the eye and told him that after much introspection, I feel that if all he has to complain about is being hit on the head with an all-week sucker, then I must have been an okay mother.

But really, I have to thank my great kids. No matter how “mommy” I might not have been, I still walk around in the world, connected to these strange two people about whom I know their quirks and fears. Whose fat, wrinkled necks and Johnson’s baby shampooed bald heads I can still recall, who wrote on the back of my baby blue linen chair with a green marker, who brought a garden hose, turned on full blast, through my house while coming in to get a popsicle. Those toddlers with deep husky voices who would climb out of their beds, come down the stairs, get as close to my face as possible and yell “MOM” to see if I was awake. Two loonies, one of which recently put on a pair of size one jeans and called herself fat. I know what they will eat, what they won’t, who threw up in a baseball hat and cried because I threw it away, who can sing and who shouldn’t. I know both of them love school supplies, thrift stores and sour gummy candy. These are the kids who changed all my passwords to Penis. The idiots who have caused such disruptions in churches that we have a list to which we shouldn’t return. Almost grown children who hold true to their Christian, animal loving, chaotic hippie homed, vegetarian values. Two individuals who can catch my eye and burst into wild laughter at inappropriate moments. These two humans whom The Goose and I whipped up, from scratch, who understand us, share our scary humor, love us and one who might take care of us when we’re old. These two oddballs, without whom I wouldn’t have the great and inexplicable joy of calling myself mother on Mother’s Day and everyday. Happy Mother’s Day to every mom who finds her children to be the very best, no matter what weirdos they actually are.

Ghostly Insight

Posted on January 28, 2013 by cloverhays

Those of us who have lost someone we love know that there are times when missing them is like wearing a giant lead hat. It’s so bad sometimes that you just feel like if you think about it hard enough, you can change the reality of things.

I’ve lost three people I truly loved. Losing one’s parents is a normal part of life. Luckily, I have my own little family, and really, it’s natural for parents to go on before us. I believe they are somewhere else, they are whole and things are good for them. Seven years after the fact, I’m in a great place and really just miss them in that hard, hurtful way only once in a while. Mostly I remember their funny sayings and all the happiness we had. We really did have a great life together.

That’s why what happened to me last week was so WEIRD. I’m not a superstitious person, nor am I experiencing any particular longing for my parents. I haven’t been thinking about them much, life is busy and I am darn happy with my life, except for the misery of winter.

Thursday, I was at the doctor. I walked down the hall to use the loo and I went through a giant cloud of Oscar de la Renta perfume. My mother smelled so strongly of this that it was sometimes hard to share the oxygen in a car with her. Her clothes, fur coat and things that I kept still reek of it. So, I figured there would be some nice little old lady that was nearby and I just breathed in and smiled. No, no one was in the hall. No one in the loo. No one ANYWHERE. So odd, just ghostly silence.

I then went down the street to the grocery store. Not my grocery store, but Ingles, which is bad enough in itself, but I was meeting The Boy for a sports physical nearby. When, out of the corner of my eye, I spied my dad. Really. My brain went “oh, there’s Dad”, because, before he died, we would often run into each other at the store. It took a minute for my brain to catch up and realize it couldn’t be him. I looked more closely and darn it, it was him. I whipped my bascart (allow me to say here that words such as bascart, communiversity, fantabulous, guesstimate and craisin make me cringe. These are not real words. I do, however, like “cremains” for some reason. As in, “we picked up Memaw’s cremains from the funeral home”.) anyhow, I whipped my buggy around and followed him. Same Member’s Only jacket, same pants, same black shoes, same gray hair and hair cut. Same walk, same time spent gazing at the ice cream section. I stalked this man. I mean I stalked the living hell out of him. I followed him when he went to the bathroom, I watched him up and down each and every isle and managed to get just ahead of him in line. I’ll have to admit that I was all teared up and sniffy by then. I ran to my car and I waited for him in the parking lot, snapping pictures surreptitiously all the way. I am ridiculously inept with my phone and the pictures are all fuzzy but I was able to convince my family that I am not crazy. I have never seen such a “dead ringer” (yes, I know this is terrible humor, but fitting) for my dad. I have noted his car, surprisingly, a red Corvette, and tag number and next time I’m going to work up the nerve to just hug him. You might read of this in the crime scene blog in the county paper. Middle aged woman in cute sweater molests older man in the dairy isle.

That night, I dreamed that I received a check from my dad, with a long letter, but in the dream, I couldn’t read the letter because it was too dark. When I awoke, I had a call from my parent’s good friend, telling me of a possible problem with their estate that I needed to look into. How weird is that? Are they still looking out for me? Last year, I got a small dividend check from my mother on my birthday. Of all the days of the year, it came then. Just enough to cover a big extravagant lunch where I wished she were there.

Do I believe my sweet parents are trying to tell me something? Do I think they’re still watching out for me? In some ways, I hope so. I always feel their love and approval, just like when they were here. In others, I hope they don’t see me in my grouchy moments, or my angry ones. I surely hope they don’t hear my language when I’m driving! I hope my mom doesn’t know that I sometimes wear jeans to church and tipple a little bit. I do hope they see how wonderful their grandchildren are. My mother would be so proud she would brag her friends’ ears off. Cricket would be despised by Baptist women everywhere just from conversation oversaturation. My dad would love to see The Boy playing lacrosse. He was still just a little baseball player when he left and he would be baffled by the game but so proud of The Boy, who would now be taller than his Grandy.

Maybe it’s just a big ol’ bunch of coincidences, most likely it is. It sure was a discombobulating 24 hours though. Maybe we get these little love notes from them when we most need them, even if we think we’re going along fine on our own. This morning, I turned on Pandora radio to the opera station and there was my mother’s favorite song, that she played relentlessly on both the piano and violin. I just laughed and said thanks.

Rock ON

Posted on January 28, 2013 by cloverhays

My friend writes a great and funny blog, Forever 51. The other day she asked what the soundtrack of our youth was. That got us talking because the kind of music we listened to says something about us.

When I met my best friend in 2nd grade, I was introduced to “Black Water”. This was pretty eye opening for me as my family only listened to classical music. I had already had the fiasco of “Jeremiah was a Bullfrog” being banned at my house because of the wine reference and I was an empty cup when it came to music. Oh, I could belt out all four stanzas of hymns 1 – 345 in the Baptist hymnal and could hum a good many waltzes and concertos, but the Doobie Brothers were out of my realm. My friend had younger parents and her house had music playing in it that made me feel cool and hip, like an after school special.

When the disco era came along I was still in middle school, tucked away in private school where we belted out the tunes about sex and drugs and had no idea what we were singing about. Barry Manilow and Abba ruled, it’s sad to say.

Upon being sprung from the misery of private school, I threw away my preppy shoes and had the eye opening experience of public education. Kids kissed and held hands in the halls, soon I kissed people in the hall. Kids could bring in a note that allowed them to SMOKE AT SCHOOL. It was an orgy. Peter Frampton rang out, The Who, REO Speedwagon. My first concert was Journey, an event for which my date had to come into my house and convince my mother I wouldn’t die or join a cult from attending.

If I had to pinpoint the band behind most of the shenanigans I committed in high school, though, I would say without a doubt, it was AC/DC. I can hear the bells starting up Hell’s Bells and still get a mental whiff and taste of that time. I can smell my car, a sweet little black Camero with a great stereo, cracklin’s from Long John Silvers spilled between the seats, and a bottle opener magnet on the dash. Led Zeppelin tapes all over the floor mixed up with punk tapes like the Sex Pistols. I remember my Halston perfume and the smoke of the fantastic parties that seem to happen most weekends.

When I met the Goose, he was on a whole different wavelength. He listened to Bruce Springsteen, who honestly causes me a bit of nausea, Jackson Brown, who makes my ears bleed and Jimmy Buffett, whom I’ve come to like in small doses due only to the fun I’ve had at his concerts and to his music. The Goose didn’t know every word to Kashmir and didn’t consider it a holy song. He didn’t know Moving in Stereo, Starship Trooper or any other long make-out songs. For a while, I won him over, most likely because of the making out, but several years into our marriage he produced from his mouth a sentence that could have spelled the end to our union. He said, with all sincerity, “I really only like country music.”. It’s true, that I’ve stayed married to him, whether out of pity or inertia, and tried to gently move him back into the light, but he persists, even asking me to “listen to the words” now and then. It’s a burden I continue to bear and I say with all shame in my heart that my precious daughter, who in high school had purple hair and listened only to music that could take one’s skin off, has veered over into that twangy territory. I find it uncomfortable to think about and embarrassing to admit, but my daughter is a country music fan and I love and support her anyway. I think there might be help group I can attend for this.

I find that in my advanced years I listen to a lot of stuff, rap and Cricket’s old screamo when I run, Grateful Dead at the lake or with wine, but the two kinds of music I continually return to are those of my youth, classical, because my mother played in the Atlanta Symphony and I grew up with the screeching of a practicing violin, and the banging rock anthems of my high school sound tracks. We all go back to what’s comfortable. I once heard someone say that we are going to be a generation of old people, sitting around in rocking chairs, holding hands, eating jello and singing along to Stairway to Heaven and I feel that, possibly due to the punishment our brains took, that time might be closer than we think.

Middle Aged Lunacy (or, Don’t Poke the Bear!)

Posted on September 18, 2012 by cloverhays

I think there’s an army of middle aged women out there set to pop. Perhaps it’s middle age that’s causing this. Perhaps a change in hormones. Maybe it’s when a well meaning hair dresser thinks you’ll be happy to learn that instead of the full on bimbo bleach she’s been using on your hair for 19 years she now thinks she should “weave in a little natural color since it’s mostly gray under there anyway”.

Women who are late 40s, early 50s just don’t seem to have the same goals as our mother’s generation. None of my friends play bridge or own panty hose. I may have missed it, but I feel certain I have never heard one of them answer “yes, dear” to any question posed by their husbands.

I believe, my friends, that most of us spent our 20s and 30s in mostly the same way. We got married, got cute little houses, got BMWs, got bigger houses. We got kids, got them into preschool, went to Gymboree. We spent Wednesday nights volunteering at church programs that caused us to scream at our children all the way there because they hadn’t learned their Bible verses. We got bobs, boob jobs, facials, SUVs, yellow labs, made Superbowl food and had polite holidays with our in-laws that caused us to gobble leftover pain pills in the bathroom. We got our son’s baseball pants their whitest, their brightest. I was a cutout for a perfect wife and mother.

I’m not sure when the rebellion set in. I mean, I should have gotten this out of the way in high school. Lord knows I partied hard enough. Still, around 40, something uncoiled deep inside me, caused me to gain about 10 lbs and asked me to please uncork some tequila. It has motivated me to swear like a sailor. I recently called my son a name which was so foul, so obscene that it sent shock waves throughout the universe causing my daughter and husband to have trouble getting enough oxygen.

Recently an online newspaper asked a question about marijuana. Before the minute was out 435 middle aged women had responded asking that it be legalized, taxed and sold in coordinating Lilly Pulitzer cases.

Thankfully, the Goose never even suggested that I should drive a mini-van. I believe this is responsible for the wrath of lots of women. It’s too much to ask. I think they should carry a warning that driving a minivan will cause you to lose your soul. Also sensible shoes, rooms painted taupe, children’s programming on tv, and wall to wall cut pile carpet in a color that hides dirt.

Authority? Can’t do it, can we? I find myself mentally flipping off policemen, store clerks, school administrators and neighbors alike. I heard myself actually tell my husband he wasn’t the boss of me. I said those exact words. I have my theme music all picked out for my police chase the next time someone attempts to give me a ticket.

If I call a friend and want to rant, I can’t even get the first sentence out without them jumping on the bandwagon and asking if they can lock and load. All they’re waiting for is a super hero costume and really, who among us isn’t? I just want it to come in Spanx material.

We’re angry, we’re ready to party and we have the shoes and the wardrobe to do it with gusto. We have the education and verbal skills to decimate the fool who attempts to argue with us. We have American Express cards, AAA and, some of us, friends in AA who can drive us home. It’s our time for fun. We see the light at the end of our mommy tunnel and I, for one, feel it’s now my children’s turn to take care of me. Before I even conceive of the thought, I want someone to pour me a wine, put it with a box of Triscuits and send them to me on a Roomba, which is doing my vacuuming for me.

I have no idea what kind of grandmothers we will become. It’s safe to say this isn’t going to be the generation that takes kindly to someone spilling a juice box on our Seven jeans and 6” Betsy Johnsons!

Rear up a Child Correctly and She May Still Embarrass You in Front of Your Bridge Club

Posted on September 17, 2012 by cloverhays

Last Sunday our sermon was about child rearing. Since I am almost done with this, I used this time to doodle, play with the charms on my bracelet and admire my shoes. One thing he said, though, slipped through. How important a good mother is in making a great child. Gosh, I started out to be a swell mom. We sang Bible songs, we did crafts, I swore by using phrases like “gee whiz” and “heck”. All went well until I purchased an Offspring CD when my daughter was in 4th grade. She swears this is when we went to hell in a handbag.

Well, I felt the guilt slipping in so I changed thoughts and considered my own mother. She was a True Southern Lady. By this I mean she was perfect. I never heard my mother swear, never saw her perspire, never heard her raise her voice to my dad, who believed she was an angel personified. There was never a moment when there wasn’t a warm pound cake on our counter. She made hospital visits, casseroles and never had a disagreement with anyone that I can think of. As an only child, I benefited so greatly from her undivided attention that my best friend used to nudge me in church and say “look, your mother is watching you breathe from the choir loft”. I also frequently got “the look” from the choir loft that told me to stop wiggling, drawing and making designs on the velvet pew cushion with my fingernails.

That’s not to say she wasn’t without her quirks. Growing up in the Bible belt, my mother was so pure that the weirdest things bothered her. Who knows where she got these ideas? For instance, I was not allowed to play the game Operation as a child because the man was nude. I don’t believe she even said the word “nude”. I’m sure it just involved another “look”. There was no word for breasts at our house, it was just chest. There were no words for boy parts or ladytown, just “the bottom” whether front of back. One did not refer to things that went on in the bathroom unless one needed to see a doctor and the bedroom was not even considered. Perrier water was out as well because the bottle was suggestive of beer. The one that, I believe, catapulted me into the middle aged lush that I am, however, was that I was not allowed to sing “Jeremiah was a Bullfrog” because, of course, he drank his wine.

I did pick up lots of good knowledge from the True Southern Lady, though. My mother fully believed that if one kept moving while eating, the calories would never find you. Our housekeeper, Sassy, claimed that she had once seen Mother eat three entire bags of Hersey’s Kisses while circling the dining room table and talking on the phone.

Although I was a terrible teen, my mom kept up with a smile. When I informed her that I was going to a concert at the dark and enjoyable Agora Ballroom, my mom and her best friend went down, during the day, to check it out for safety and propriety. My mother fell and sprained her ankle never knowing that I had already changed my weekend plans. I just keep imaging the guys in those dark depths picking up my mom as she smoothed down her skirt and straightened her pearls, oh gosh and oh geeing all the time.

Probably the only thing I can think of that she ever did wrong was wear a fur coat. There is nothing more evil in the world than fur and I couldn’t bear (no pun) to look at her in it, but like so many others of her generation, she adored it and popped it on anytime the temperature dipped below 65. When she died, I was left with the dilemma of what to do with it. I couldn’t sell it because I don’t want anyone to wear fur. I couldn’t throw it away because so many little mink lives would be wasted. So, I keep it in the back of my closet and sometimes when I miss her, I bury my face it it and it still smells of the Oscar that she wore. Besides, it made a great addition to Cricket’s boyfriend’s pimp outfit last Halloween.

I know that my style of mothering has been entirely deficient when compared to my mom. Life is so much faster now and I have certainly not lived up to her standards. I know my kids will never hear the theme music to Days of our Lives and conjure up images of sitting at the table with sweet tea and little sandwiches while Sassy irons to the clean smell of Niagara spray starch and discusses “their story” with my mom. I haven’t worn many respectable length skirts and they’ve never seen me in a one piece swim suit. They probably won’t use me as a role model in which to judge what’s right and what’s wrong. They’ve seen too much and really, it’s hard to fully respect a mother wearing a tiara and prom dress on horseback.

If you have a mom handy, call her up and lie about how good you’ve been and tell her how much you love her because without these True Southern Ladies, the world is a darker and less sparkly place.

and a possum in the dishwasher

Tag Archives: mothers