Mama and her knives

I became nostalgic today as I was sharpening a pencil with a paring knife, a skill I learned from my mama. All of the pencils in my childhood home became short stumps with hand-honed points. My mama liked knives.

Apparently she liked knives from an early age because she told stories about playing mumbly-peg as a child. Mumbly-peg was a game that involved scoring points by throwing pocket knives into patches of dirt. I don’t recall her describing the rules of the game because I was distracted by the idea that my mother played with pocket knives as a child. I’m certain she didn’t wear a helmet when she rode a bike.

For a period of time in my high school years I carried a switchblade knife in the pocket of my coat, along with a string of rosary beads. The acorn/tree. But that’s a story for another time.

Mama had a way of slicing and peeling food items that looked really dangerous. She held the knife in her right hand using her right thumb as the stopper for the knife blade. To this day, I do it the same way and people shudder when they watch me. She never cut herself. I haven’t either. 

But she cut herself many times doing things that should have been less dangerous. Her trips to the Adventist Hospital ER were legend. I take that back—many of the ER trips were for one of us kids, injured when one of us “accidentally” got a head busted open by coming in contact with the heel of her shoe. On the way to the hospital, she coached my brother to tell the ER personnel that he fell and hit his head of the coffee table. Once when she cut her own hand using a knife to pry open a can of tuna she told the Adventist ER doctor that she fell and cut it on a whiskey bottle. I said, “Mom! That’s a lie—why did you tell him it was a whiskey bottle?” She smirked and said, “Those Adventists don’t drink. I thought it was more interesting than saying it was a tuna fish can.”

And she had a thing about sharpening her knives. Her favorite carving knife had a wooden handle and a blade about 10 inches long. Over time it became curved like an ancient Turkish scythe used in battle against the infidels. 

Her things are all gone now, disbursed to various people or taken to the thrift store—her pink hand-crank ice crusher, her big aluminum pot that she used to cook spaghetti sauce (including the incident when my brother threw a wad of chewed up grape bubble gum in the sauce, giving it an uncharacteristic and unexplained grape flavor), and her olive trays. All gone. 

I wonder what happened to the ancient Turkish weapon she called a knife. I could use that knife to sharpen my pencils.

Walking home

Imagine this: An elderly woman, her life now counted in months, weeks, perhaps only days. She is distressed and questioning what will happen at the end of her days--will there be nothing, will she see God, will she ever be with her beloved husband who departed before her?

Despite spending a lifetime following her faith, she now doubts. That seems to me to be a cruel conclusion to a life spent observing her religion as closely as she could.

So a priest comes to see her to discuss her concerns. She is old school, she hangs on his every word. He is a priest she has known for years and she trusts him to interpret God's plan for her. She tells him she wonders if God exists, she fears death because it could simply be the end of everything. What if there's no life after death? What if she never sees her husband again, never sees her parents, or all those she loved who went before her? The promises of Scripture ring hollow and, in her advanced age, she can't remember what it was that once gave her hope.

And the priest tells her that he feels the same way, that he has the same questions. I imagine some words of comfort, reassurance came after he told her that he shares her fears. He probably said, " . . . but the Lord has told us not to fear . . ."

She only heard what he said before the "but" statement. All she absorbed is that the priest, the one with the direct line to God, the one whose faith surely must never waiver, that the priest has fears too.

So she, who can be outrageously funny and talkative and the life of the party, is now despondent and fearful. This is not the way it should be. I want to see her at peace, assured of her salvation, resting in the anticipation of an eternity spent in perfect bliss. She deserves to walk home in peace, basking in love.

Brad and Ma

So I’m having a conversation with my mother this evening and the cheery issue of the hereditary aspect of breast cancer comes up. We are especially sensitive to information about heredity and breast cancer because my grandmother (my mother’s mother) died of breast cancer at the age of 49. I mention to my mother that some women with high genetic predisposition to breast cancer are having preventative mastectomies. For example, Angelina Jolie.

Mom: Angelina Jolie? Who is that?

Me: She’s the beautiful actress who is married to Brad Pitt.

Mom: Oh, I love that movie about the river.

 

Me: “A River Runs Through It”? Yes, I love that movie too. The book is even better. It’s actually a short story in a book. I have it and I’ll bring it to you so you can read it.

 

Mom: Oh, yes, the book is often better than the movie. Brad Pitt—he’s my boyfriend. I have no idea what he sees in that woman. She has such puffy lips.

Xander and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day

Yesterday was a rotten day for my spirits. I was feeling down because—but for circumstances beyond my control—it should have been my 48^th wedding anniversary. It also would have been my former husband’s 70^th birthday. (Yes, we got married on his birthday.) He didn’t even live long enough to get out of his 50s so I suppose I should consider myself fortunate to be alive. But sometimes being alive doesn’t feel so fortunate.

Last night I called my mother, just to check in with her. She’s 89, on oxygen, barely ambulatory. She asked how I was doing.

I said: “Not that great.”

She said: “Well, I’ll cheer you up. I can always cheer you up. I’ve been awful sick all day today.” (She went on to recount her woes that I won’t share—suffice it to say she had digestive upset.) “And I’m awfully lonely. I was supposed to visit with Mae today but I was too sick. I just don’t have any friends here. Well, there was Shirley, but she died. My friend Ruth down the hall was very friendly, but she died. My neighbor Joan with the one leg died, poor thing. And Mr. Miller liked me, but did you know he died too? And I really don’t think I have much time left to live now. Oh, but I’m supposed to be cheering you up. How’s your cat?”

I replied: “Mom, my cat is dead. She died before Christmas.”

She said: “Oh, I didn’t remember that. What happened?

So I had to explain my cat’s illness and death. Again. That really helped to lift my mood. Then she started asking me why I don’t ever bring her to my house to stay. “All the stairs, Mom, you can’t do the stairs. I think I’m going to have to hang up now.”

She replied: “No, no, don’t hang up. I want to talk to you so I can cheer you up. Did you know Joe Donahue died?”

At that point we both laughed at the absurdity of the situation. All that death can be pretty funny after all.

Billy Bugasky

On Mother’s Day, something comes up in conversation about Mike. My mother asks me how long it has been since Mike died. “A little over a year, Ma. He died in late February last year.”

“Well,” she says, “I’m awful upset. My high school boyfriend Billy Bugasky died. I still can’t believe it. Billy Bugasky. Awful upset.”

 
Please note that Billy Bugasky died about a year ago at the age of 90. But he was her high school boyfriend. She graduated from high school in 1943 and in the intervening years she was married to my father for nearly 65 years. But she’s awful upset about Billy Bugasky. I guess she just wasn’t expecting it—maybe in her mind he’s still a teenage boy.    

 

 

Mama Said: Glued-in hair

Hair. My mother is obsessed with hair. She is continually commenting on other people’s hair and she’s continually changing her own hair. During one of her phases, she decided she needed to do something about the thin spot on top of her head. So she cut up a little synthetic hairpiece and attached hunks of hair to the top of her head with super glue. She called me to tell me what a wonderful improvement it was, that I should try it, and she didn’t know why no one had thought of it before. In a couple of days the glued-in synthetic hair pieces started coming out, taking with them chunks of her actual hair.

(The photo is mamacita getting a poor woman's painless facelift performed by my sister.)

Mama Said: Everyone needs brown sling-backs

A couple of years ago our family did the grab-bag swap thing for Christmas gifts. Everyone was supposed to bring a gift that would be appropriate for anyone in the family. "Anyone" includes men, women, boys, girls, young and old. We've got big people and little people and a variety of tastes and interests. Other family members brought food and gag gifts and stationery. Except my mother. She brought a pair of ladies brown sling-back pumps, size 7. I'm still speechless.

Mama Said: At Chick and Ruth's

This one I just remembered. How could I have forgotten?

We’re were at Chick and Ruth’s, a diner in Annapolis known for being the gathering spot for all the state legislators, the movers and shakers in Maryland government. I love Chick and Ruth’s—where else can you find a restaurant where everyone rises out of their chairs every day at a designated time, and they all recite together the pledge of allegiance? So we’re there for breakfast. Our waitress is wearing a very obvious patch on her eye. My mother can’t decide what to order, then she looks at the waitress and says, “I’ll have one egg. Over easy. And I’m not saying that just because of your eye.”

Mama Said: Millie's Agony

My son was here for a visit a few weeks ago and he mentioned to me that I really should write down all the crazy things I can remember my mother saying and doing. She is legend. Honestly, you can't make up this stuff. So I started writing. And I thought maybe I'll start a feature about her here on my blog. If that guy can become wildly successful writing "Shit My Dad Says" about his outrageous father, then I can write "Mama Said" about my outrageous mother. So this is the introduction to my mother. This is a piece I wrote about her a few years ago, before my father died. She's older now, but the stories just keep coming. And I'll post continuing slices of Millie-isms here from time to time.

Millie’s Agony

Millie is like a rabid butterfly, bumming cigarettes from her grandchildren in backless plastic purple shoes, sequined daisies wrapped around her big toes. Her hair color changes from day to day, varying from magenta to blonde, sometimes permed, sometimes in a spiky punk style. She may be wearing one of those dime store hair attachments that has no relationship to the hair color de jour. Millie is my mother; she is 76 years old, trying to stay current.

It’s not just her appearance that changes—she redecorates weekly. It’s hard to imagine that when we were growing up we had a comfortable Early American décor rambler with braided rugs and a pine hutch in the dining room. My parents now have an elegant two-bedroom condo. “Elegant” is my mother’s favorite word. The condo is very clean with white upholstery and white wall-to-wall carpeting. It’s like a builder’s show house except it has the accessories of four show houses crammed into one. Silk flowers, gilded angels, porcelain dolls, beaded throw pillows, a nearly life-size brass greyhound, a marble Venus in the corner. There’s a picture frame containing a photo of a young woman. It’s the photograph that came with the frame, but it is signed, “with love from Jenny.” Millie signed it herself. Jenny is my daughter—Millie says that Jenny could look like the model in the photograph if she worked on it. Maybe she could loan Jenny one of her hairpieces.

My father, a living saint, is legally blind now, but when he still could see, Millie had him repaint the walls every month. She changes her mind a lot. Now she just changes pictures. The pictures still have price tags on the back so she can return them when she changes her mind. She uses the discount home furnishing store like a public library. Pictures everywhere—walls, doors, even in the bathroom. The bathroom doesn’t sound that unusual, does it? She has an “original” Monet hanging over the bathtub in the guest bathroom, hole drilled through the tile. The lily-of-the-valley-theme guest bathroom is for display purposes only. Incidentally, she claims that all of her little finds are original works of art and were very expensive. I can’t figure out how she can afford this art on a modest retirement income. Last year she gave me a Picasso in a plastic frame. It’s an original Picasso, of course. Priceless. So is Millie.

Every year on my birthday she has to recount for me in gory detail the events of my birth, the full recitation of what she calls “the agony story.” The opening line never varies, except to accommodate my current age,  “Fifty-five years ago today I was in agony,” she whined last month on my birthday. The story usually continues with, “They tore me up. Your head was huge and it had two enormous lumps, almost like three heads.” Details I never want to hear about hours of labor and forceps and stitches. She usually includes the bit about how her mother shopped all over town with a grapefruit in her purse to find a bonnet to fit a newborn. When my grandmother brought the bonnet to the hospital it fit only one of my three heads. This year Millie threw in a new twist. She called a week before my birthday to tell me that 55 years ago she was simply miserable because it was hot and she was very pregnant. I was the first of five children—she doesn’t have an agony story of the same magnitude for the others.

I can’t recall when she started the agony story tradition, but I know for certain it was at least 20 years ago. At this point I can recite it with her. Sometimes she will find a reason to hit the play button on occasions other than my birthday. For example, a mere reference to my birthday could prompt a full recitation, which seems strangely out of place at Christmas.

It never worked to try humor to divert her from the story. “Mother, give it a rest, I know the story now better than you do,” I would say, followed by a recitation of the first few lines. She continued. So I tried understanding, empathy, “Mom, I know that it must have been really hard for you, I apologize for being such a difficult birth. I was just a baby, I didn’t know better.” That didn’t work either.

Last year I finally made progress. On my birthday I sent her flowers. In the morning, before she had a chance to call me, the florist arrived at her apartment with a bouquet of irises and roses, her favorite flowers. The note said simply, “Thanks for having me. I love you.” That worked. She called me, crying, unable to recite the agony story. When I reminded her that she had to go through the ritual or my birthday wouldn’t be complete, she started, “Well, okay, 54 years ago today I was in agony.” But then she started to cry again.

I am past all the Freudian psychoanalytic pap; I am tired of examining my childhood and blaming my mother for her frailties. It’s her humanity, her goofy, loving, flawed existence that I am learning to celebrate and appreciate. She is outrageous, but she can be hilarious. She can be frighteningly shallow yet staggeringly profound. She drives me crazy yet I truly love her and she has an unfaltering love for me, despite the agony.