Why Moms Know Best

Hi,


Today is my mother's 75th birthday, a mark worth commemorating. She is, after all, now a year older than Dad even though at one time she was six-and-a-half years younger than him.




I probably should give some background on what exactly we're commemorating: Mom, my mom, was born in a cabin in the woods at the turn of the century, the last century—19th to 20th—or maybe a decade or two before that. In any case it was when things were bitty and speckled. While in labor, Grandma churned butter and darned socks (darned socks to heck). The umbilical cord* was cut with an axe, and they all tossed around an inflated pig's bladder to celebrate her birth.



Later, as she grew, she got an inkling to get herself some coon-hunting dogs. So she saved her money in a jar until there was enough to buy one beautiful red fern plant. She also lived in a box car for a while. Everything that she interacted with while growing up was little, (e.g., cabins, houses, britches, princesses, two boys, two toys). If my recollections are accurate, she also solved several mysteries involving caves and stolen treasure.



Mom has a very honed and sophisticated vocabulary. The confines of the English language could never hold her. Shootibahooti, petey pot, henly penly, hoochi pacoochi or some other unique combination of vowels and consonants, fly off her tongue with similar flourish to a Shakespearean actor reciting Dr. Seuss. Her favorite curse word: shot put!



Mom always remembers people’s names by changing them to Charles or Wilson (pronounced Wiltsin) or Pinkerton. My particular nic-name was an interesting hybrid of the first few letters of my older brother's name joined in unholy matrimony to the last few letters of my name. Skicky. She never forgot it.



Mom is very considerate of others' feelings. By others I, of course, mean people--and inanimate objects. She is known to go out and rearrange drying laundry on the line, "because these shirts look like they want to be closer to each other (not a literal quote)." The spoons like to associate with other spoons while showering in the dishwasher. Same for the forks. And the knives. She isn't a segregationist, however, at least not with humans.



She had nine children. Nine! We were spread out over 21 years. Really, Mom and Dad had three separate families. Almost like they finished with the first four and said, "well that didn't work out as planned." So, they had the "two weeds in the middle" and that didn't work out either. So they said, "We'd really like to have an idyllic family unit, let's try it again." And when it didn't work out with the last three, they gave up.



Dad wore an icon on his face, a beautiful mustache (side note: is that how mustache is spelled? Like a description of what wearing a mustache feels like? "That must ache.") Anyway, Mom wears an icon too. Her icon is an amazing smile. That smile, and what it is attached to, is the first thing I remember loving—my mommy and her beauty.



Happy Birthday.





*I initially misspelled umbilical cord as umbilical chord. FYI the umbilical chord is the C7 chord because it is often confused with C-section. For example—

Musician Fellow: Play a C7 there.

Pregnant Musician Gal: Did you just recommend a C-section?