Me Mudder Did It
Mother’s Day has come and went and, with all that went on in my life yesterday, I forgot to post. Pretend this was Sunday, ok? Ok.
Whatever I wrote about my mother last year probably hasn’t changed since then. I do know that she checked out at 86 wearing her tap dancing shoes and I also know that she pretty much came of age accepting a dare to go up in some barnstormer’s airplane when she was a teenager. Her mother wasn’t there to tell her not to, although I’m not so sure she would have. That’s another story.
You see, her mother came home one day and told her father, “Frank, I’ve bought a house.” And her mother bounced around from religion to religion, eventually passing on as a Baptist. I think the only one left was Catholic and she’d have disgraced herself in public before doing that – which, in itself, would have been a public disgrace.
Some of the worst, drippy slush has appeared on Mother’s Day. The guilt of a thousand generations of adult children who remember mother only in regret and tears. Bull***t. I remember mine with a photo in my radio studio of her on the back of a motorcycle at 74, or our nature walks at 37 (I was 5). I wish I had done many things differently, but I do think we pulled through some rough times pretty well.
Everybody has a story.
The big-time gangster Arnold Rothstein was asked who shot him. Keeping faithful to the gangster tradition of secrecy even as he was dying, he said, "Me mudder did it."
Whatever I wrote about my mother last year probably hasn’t changed since then. I do know that she checked out at 86 wearing her tap dancing shoes and I also know that she pretty much came of age accepting a dare to go up in some barnstormer’s airplane when she was a teenager. Her mother wasn’t there to tell her not to, although I’m not so sure she would have. That’s another story.
You see, her mother came home one day and told her father, “Frank, I’ve bought a house.” And her mother bounced around from religion to religion, eventually passing on as a Baptist. I think the only one left was Catholic and she’d have disgraced herself in public before doing that – which, in itself, would have been a public disgrace.
Some of the worst, drippy slush has appeared on Mother’s Day. The guilt of a thousand generations of adult children who remember mother only in regret and tears. Bull***t. I remember mine with a photo in my radio studio of her on the back of a motorcycle at 74, or our nature walks at 37 (I was 5). I wish I had done many things differently, but I do think we pulled through some rough times pretty well.
Everybody has a story.
The big-time gangster Arnold Rothstein was asked who shot him. Keeping faithful to the gangster tradition of secrecy even as he was dying, he said, "Me mudder did it."
posted by Tom Carten at 10:34 AM
1 Comments:
Whatever I wrote about my mother last year probably hasn’t changed since then.
What you wrote last year is still there to be enjoyed. It brought a tear to my eye when I read it then.
It still does.
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