Celebrating MY Mom

We’ve all been sighing with consternation about how overrated Mother’s Day is, so I thought, even though MY Mother’s Days are no great shakes, and MY day is really more about eating gloppy breakfast made by little hands, enjoying homemade cards, and INEVITABLY wiping someone else’s ass, I can look back at ALLLL the shit I put my mother through, and be grateful she still takes my call on the first Sunday of each May.

So here is my Top 10 List of Why My Mom Fucking Rocks:

1. She had 5 kids of her own, and our house was the neighborhood hangout. So essentially, she ALWAYS had a pack of feral monkeys in her home. We did everything but fling poo at each other… come to think of it, I can’t even be sure of that. I have 4 brothers, and god only knows what they got up to when I was hiding in my room with K and our other two BFFs.
2. She was always open about sex. I remember being 7 and asking about sex. My 9-yr-old brother was in the room, too. She very casually went about filing the papers she was handling, and answering our questions with direct, age-appropriate responses. In our teens, we often teased our parents about how none of us wanted the room over theirs because that bed squeaking EVERY night kept us awake. And they LAUGHED about it.
3. She was never, EVER, embarrassed to show her husband affection. My husband and my sisters-in-law have benefitted from this directly, because my brothers and I think it’s perfectly normal to kiss our spouses or hug them in front of people. (Although, I hope my brothers refrain from feeling up their wives in front of their kids. Really, Dad? I was trying to eat my fucking corn flakes. OVERKILL.)
4. She is fucking BRILLIANT. I do not say this lightly. She’s still a little bitter that she missed joining Mensa by 2 IQ points. TWO. JAYsus. She got a master’s degree in genetics in 1967. I BOW to her.
5. She is scary as hell. I asked her once how old she was when she realized that she intimidated people. “Fifty,” she told me. AWESOME. You do not fuck with Ginny; consequently, you do not fuck with Ginny’s daughter.
6. She’s a survivor. (OK, now I’m crying.) My dad dropped dead of a sudden heart attack at age 49. My mom was 48, and a stay-at-home mom with 2 kids still at home. That 24-yr-old master’s degree was out of date, so she went back to nursing school. She graduated valedictorian. Grieving, with 2 kids at home, she graduated at the top of her class. Chew on that.
7. Hanging out with Drunk Ginny is about the most fucking fun you will EVER HAVE. Get that woman on a dance floor and you will never, ever have a slow party again.
8. She has excellent taste in men. She adores my husband.
9. “Soccer mom”? PLEASE. Ginny was a baseball-football-cheerleading-softball-wrestling mom for YEARS before the term even existed. She was president of our Little League for 6 years. She owned a Dodge Ram Mini-Van–the pre-cursor to the mini-van we all know and love/hate. No sliding doors on that bad boy. And it was a STICK SHIFT. Suck it.
10. I was picking her up from the airport one day a few years ago, and she was talking to a couple of ladies outside in the White Zone. After I hugged her, she headed to the car, and I went back to grab her bag. One of the ladies (a total stranger my mom had met on the plane) grabbed my elbow, and said, “Your mom is an amazing woman.” I smiled proudly and said, “I know.”
11. BONUS: She never gets mad at me for forgetting to send her a Mother’s Day card, which is about 2 out of every 3 years. ’Cause I SUCK.

So I can look forward to the days when MY girls forget to send ME cards. In the meantime, Mother’s Day is more about my kids than it is about me, but that’s OK. For now.