THE DAY MOM GOT REAL

I just watched the video from HERE'S TO YOU THURSDAY that I dedicated to all of the moms with my mom. It made both of us cry. That was our sentimental Mother's Day moment. I just finished reading all of the blogs I follow. Almost all were about Mother's Day and were poignant and nostalgic. The truth is that being a mom is the job that never ends. It is also the job you will love the most, but will give you the most frustration and the most reward. Even though C-Man and H-Girl are not my biological children, I know that you can love other people more than yourself. It doesn't have anything to do with biology. I also know what it is like to love like that and lose them.... not to death, but to divorce. So, I could write a piece today from the perspective of a parent or a child. I know what both sides of that coin look like.


I want to tell you about the day that my mother became "real" to me. There was one day when I was in junior high school that my mother lost it for about thirty seconds, and I got to see her as a person, and not just a mom. At that time, we were driving to Zanesville (in Ohio) for me to see an allergist. I was having a really bad time with allergies, and there was an allergist there who was trying some alternative stuff that was actually helping. We were on our way home, which required getting onto the highway, and that involved merging into traffic.

Here comes the "getting real" part. Before I share this, I have to put it into perspective for you. There just isn't a more straight arrow than my mom. Period. Not only was there a no cursing rule at my house, there was a no word that sounds remotely like it could be a variation of a curse word rule at our house. So that eliminated things like frick, frack, ding, dang, durn, darn, etc. If you went there, you just had to keep on rolling with it. My brother got really good at this sort of thing when he got caught. He made up crazy words. Dingbingzingerpollywantacracker. And then he'd smile like a choir boy.

Back to the merging into traffic.... Apparently, when we merged some guy felt like my mom cut him off and he gave her the finger. I am not sure what about that hit her button. I know that she felt like she did not cut him and did not deserve the finger, but most days she would have just let this slide. Not today. She rolled down her window. And I mean she rolled it down by hand. It was wintertime and it was pre-electric windows. So, she applied some elbow work action to roll down the window, stuck her hand out the window, and GAVE HIM THE FINGER. And then she screamed as loud as she could, "TO YOU TOO, BUDDY!"

Meanwhile, I am in awe. Before this incident, I was enjoying the rare treat of a vanilla shake from McDonald's. It was now hanging by a thread in my hands. I was lucky I didn't drop it outright. I might have gotten the finger, too, because she was on a roll. Eventually, I remembered my shake and started working on that. It was a much safer pastime than commenting on what I had just witnessed.

In hindsight, am I glad that my mom had such a strict no cursing policy at home? Absolutely. Am I glad that my parents were/are the kind of people who don't incorporate that kind of talk into their everyday speech? A hundred times yes. Do I think you can turn it on and off at will? No. People who think that they can talk that way at work and with their friends, but not around their kids, are fooling themselves. They will slip and their kids will talk that way. Honestly, it is what it is with an adult. But a kid that curses is bad. They call it potty mouth because it stinks.

However, getting a glimpse of my mother as a person, and not just a mom, that was pretty awesome.