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Mama 2004-02-25, 3:08 p.m. Saturday is my mother�s birthday. She will be 51. There won�t be a party. She won�t open a lot of gifts. I�m sure very few people will even remember that it�s her special day. I�m also sure that she couldn�t possibly care less. I notice more and more gray strands in her dark hair each time that I see her. Her smooth face is starting to show small, crinkly lines around her eyes and mouth. She moves a little slower when we go to the mall. She wears Easy Spirit tennis shoes with gel inserts because her bad feet bother her. She doesn�t like to drive at night, she wears reading glasses all the time, and she has clothes in her closet that are older than I am, still in perfect condition that she can�t bear to give away. When I look at my mom, I see a classy woman who never wanted for much. I can�t believe that she doesn�t have a skin care routine. She doesn�t use Oil of Olay or $37 Soap or order skin care products from Canada several times a year. If she remembers, she smears a bar of soap on her cheeks in the shower. Putting on make-up takes about a minute � she carefully dots her face with pressed powder, curls her eyelashes, and dabs them with black Maybelline mascara. She probably spends $10 on beauty products every six months. This says so much about my mother � on the surface, she seems like such a simple person. She gets up, she goes to work, she comes home, she cooks and cleans, she does Mom Stuff. Fortunately, I�ve started to see my mom as a person, someone I can form a meaningful adult relationship with, and not just as the woman I despised for most of my adolescence. My mom had a rough childhood and she rarely talks about it. Occasionally at holiday get-togethers, she and her brothers will rehash stories about family camping trips or their summer jobs. They are careful to share only the funny stories, the ones we all know as if they happened to us. They hide the stories about the emotional and verbal abuse that they endured as kids. They never let us know that they grew up so poor that they only had four or five sets of clothes apiece, with another (and comparatively better) set for Sundays, and that all of their clothes were handmade or purchased for them by their parents� friends. They never tell us that they still go without so many things now in order to give their families opportunities that they never had. A few years ago, my mom and I were in a diner in small town in Wisconsin. We were going to visit my younger sister and bring her home with us for a holiday break and we�d stopped for lunch on the way. My mom looked up at me over her cup of chili and told me that when she was in college, her parents rarely came to pick her up for holiday breaks � they were working, they couldn�t really afford the round-trip, a multitude of reasons. Typically, it was not a big deal � she got rides with friends or met her parents halfway. She told me that one December, after classes were over, she had to walk to the bus station to catch a bus to go home for the Christmas holiday. This was before rolling luggage was affordable, and she carried a heavy, hard-sided Samsonite suitcase filled with her books and clothes more than a mile to the bus station. Her eyes misted over when she told me this story, and I completely lost it in the middle of this diner, complete with sobbing and dripping wet, heavy tears all over my omelet and toast. I had the most vivid image of my mom, wearing her warmest winter clothes, struggling to carry her heavy suitcase that far just to get home and see her family. I was completely overcome with emotion and to this day, I still don�t understand why. My mom is a sports fanatic. She lives for baseball season and happily spends hours sitting wherever the old AM radio gets the best reception for that day�s game. She could live without football, but she watches it anyway, because what else is there to do between the World Series ending and NCAA basketball Midnight Madness? When we were little, we used to get woken up by my mom yelling at college basketball referees or protesting that a strike should�ve been called a ball. She�d rant and rave at the television and we�d hear our dad�s chuckling laugh, and know that he was shaking his head at her, wondering if she was crazy, and hoping that we�d sleep through another game. She hasn�t missed many of my brother�s swimming meets over the past 17 years and she has Fan Parenting down to an art � she doesn�t travel without two working stopwatches, a clipboard, pens and highlighters, bleacher chairs, pillows (to nap between sessions), coolers filled with juice, water and snacks (because the natatoriums charge too much for something she could pick up and pack herself), change and small bills (because she�ll hit the so-called overpriced snack bars anyway), many layers of dress (because a 7 a.m. warmup time is cold, but a full natatorium at 3 p.m. is a different story), and shoes that she can easily slide off her feet when nobody�s looking. She keeps a small satchel packed and ready to go, which obviously is there in case of an emergency swimming meet because lord knows that my mom wouldn�t miss a meet on the schedule for anything. Her love for her children is strong, but I don�t believe she�s ever said the words �I love you� to anyone in her entire life. I�ve never heard her say it to my dad, and she�s never said it to my siblings or to me. When I left for college, she started signing e-mails �Love, Mom� and as a very affectionate person, I interpreted that as a huge breakthrough. She doesn�t hug people, she rarely cries. But I know she loves me because she still checks up on me to make sure I get home safely from my travels. I know she loves me because she lent me money two years ago that I still haven�t paid back, and she hasn�t said a word about it because she knows I�ll get around to it eventually. And she knows I love her because I call her first when my heart gets broken, I go to her for advice on what to buy for wedding gifts and how to make good chicken stock (even though I�m stubborn and hate admitting that I need help or don�t know how to do something), and because she�s my mom and the love we share is evolving, unconditional, and strong.
My mom made sure I got the finest piano instructor in a 100-mile radius, even if it meant that she wouldn�t buy herself any new clothes that year. She spent hours driving us to lessons and practice and band concerts and football games and slumber parties and group meetings and never once complained. She tries really hard not to laugh at farts before admonishing the farter. She falls asleep thirty seconds after lying down, and often snoozes in her recliner in the evenings, oblivious to what�s going on around her. She�s an animal lover, she knows exactly what all three of her kids� favorite foods are, and she bakes cherry pies from scratch for my dad whenever the mood strikes her. She taught me how to crack an egg perfectly on the side of the bowl, the value of a good public library, and the importance of knowing every line of Ferris Bueller�s Day Off by heart. (Because at our house, when someone asks where your mother is, you reply �She�s in Decaaaatur. Hopefully she�s staying.� And then somebody else tells you to get over there and pick them up or you can find yourself a new best friend and we all fall down laughing.) She consoles me when my kitties are sick, she soothes me when I�m broken-hearted, she sends me funny packages, with gifts as obscure as Newt Gingrich paper dolls, or as useful and generous as Calphalon cookware. She freaks out when I�m freaking out, but she doesn�t let it show until the cause for the freaking has passed. She�s strong, a little sassy, and one of the kindest, funniest, most patient women I�ll ever know. She has seen me at my very best and she�s seen me at my absolute worst, and she loves me. This much, I know to be true.
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