Soul Flier

How could you have grown up so fast, when the day you were born, you, grown up, seemed a million years away? 

Syd and me when she was about 13.
Photo credit: Jon Aronin

How did you get so capable, because when you were two, you needed me for everything? 

How could you have needed me for everything, then barged ahead anyway, my pigheaded angel-face, convinced that you needed me for nothing? 

And how did you get so strong, my fairy warrior princess, when there was a time that you worried about everything?

Remember that day on the bed? You said you were so afraid to die. I tried to think what could have made you that anxious. Then, you spoke of stresses from school, your parents' divorce, and unreliable friends. You cried about missing your grandma, leaving your childhood, losing your home, and growing old. 

No wonder you were frightened; you'd worried yourself full circle to confront your own mortality. And we went around and around and around, I trying to comfort you and you still not comforted.

Then I, a discontented agnostic, struggling to believe, said the last thing I could think of that might help, that after I died, I would watch over you, and that when you died, I would watch then, too, and fly down from Heaven just in time to catch your soul, that I would hold it tight against me and pilot it to Heaven. 

So far, my help hadn't helped, so I braced for your scoff. 

But you said, "You promise?"

And I said, "I promise."

A Duckling at Sea

Getting a feeling that your two-year-old has more sense than you do isn't pleasant. I had that feeling at a party for my daughter's fifth birthday. 

Jon at another party, probably the same year.

I've never known why the face-painter put that

dot on his forehead. Photo copyright protected.

My then-husband and I threw this party with the parents of one of our daughter's friends whose birthday was at about the same time. Since we were saving money by splitting the costs, the four of us decided to spring for a moon bounce. This one was purple and built to look like a storybook castle. 

That moon bounce was the delight of every moppet at the party; they were jumping, tumbling and fanny-dropping within its mesh-y, net confines and squealing with delight. But by the end of the day, the moppets were tired and the moon bounce sat empty as the children ate or entertained themselves more sedately elsewhere. 

One of the other mommies at the party slipped over to me and whispered, "The moon bounce is empty and the rental company's on its way to get it. Let's go play in it!" And even though my fellow mommy and I were curvy, good-sized women, we saw nothing amiss in the two of us frolicking in the moon bounce as though we were forty-pound five-year-olds.     

We left the house and giggled ourselves over to the side yard where the moon bounce sat, seemingly glum. The sunlight, which earlier gleamed from its purple hide, was now dimming into dusk. It was obvious to us that the moon bounce was lonely and needed two grown women in it, so we slipped off our shoes and clamored in. I was surprised at how much work it was to hop around in there, and though I was getting winded, I was having fun. A few minutes later, my son, Jon who was two, toddled over and laboriously hauled himself up into the moon bounce.

"Hi, there, Jon!" I called. The exertion and bouncing made my words come out in breathy chunks. He sat near the moon bounce entrance, rolling and bobbing, a duckling at sea. "Did you come to bounce with us?"
     
"Uh-huh," he smiled. He struggled to gain his footing but fell on his bottom every time one of us mommies landed; still, he remained good-natured about it. 

Suddenly, the other mommy lost her balance. She fell backward into the net wall which proceeded to stretch several feet in an ominous, yawning bulge then snap back to fling her across the entire width of the moon bounce. She slammed against the opposite wall which also stretched and bulged before flinging her in a sweaty heap to the middle of the moon bounce floor.

Jon, still on his fanny, placidly watched as the mommy went hurtling. Then he looked at me calmly, the lips on his little gnome face parted, and he spoke these very wise words: "I gettin' outta here, Mommy."

With that, he flipped onto his tummy, swung his legs out of the moon bounce, and with a little thump, plopped onto the grass. He padded away leaving me with the troubling notion that there went a two-year-old who had more smarts than his mother. 

And I wondered how many years I had before he'd notice.  

Tales of the Unexpected

Sometimes a snappy retort is welcomed and sometimes, not so much. Sometimes what comes from a loved one's mouth in our time of need is not what we expected to hear, and sometimes what comes out of our mouths is not what our loved ones expect either. 

Syd and Jon at that retort-ish stage.
Photo by Teece Aronin, all rights reserved. 

A few winters ago, during one of the worst winters on record, as huge swaths of the U.S. suffered through a polar vortex, I left work at 4 p.m. to take my son, Jon for an allergy shot. Then we hit the post office, tried to find our way back to an ice cream shop we like (I have no sane reason for that in the midst of a polar vortex), got lost, gave up on the ice cream shop, picked up my daughter, Syd, went to the store, then pulled into our apartment house parking lot four hours later. Everyone was a little on edge because the weather was truly awful. We sat in the car, dreaded getting out, and then I snapped.

"Great! We've been driving around for hours and now the whole evening is shot!" Jon looked over and said, "Mom, it's just one night out of thousands in your life. It's okay." I complimented Jon on being so wise. When we got out of the car, the wind hit us smack in the face. It felt like fistfuls of razor blades hurled by an unseen sadist.

"Oh, maaan!" Jon wailed. "I forgot I have to walk the stupid dog!" Watching him hustle up the walk, miserable from the cold, I called after him, "Jon! It’s just one night out of thousands in your life!" He flat-out ignored me and kept walking. I apologized later because using a child’s words of comfort against him is a low thing to do, but I was exhausted, cranky, and after all, it was a polar vortex.

One day, after I got rear-ended and my back was killing me, I asked Syd to bring me a glass of ice water and some ibuprofen. I was still a little loopy from a pain pill I'd had earlier, so as she handed the pills to me, I said, "Oh, thank you. Having you was such a good idea. Now I'm extra glad I did."

Syd smiled placidly and replied, "I'm not sure if you getting high on pain meds is a good idea. Kind of scared of what you'll say next.”

If I had thought she would say, "Aw, Mom, I love you," I was mistaken. 

This same kid sat in a high school classroom one first day of school as a girl came in, crying. Syd didn't know her, but she got up from her desk, walked to the girl and asked what happened. The girl explained that she'd just been bullied. "Do you need a hug?" Syd asked. The girl said she did, so Syd hugged her then stepped back and quipped, "Who do you want me to beat up?" I expect that show of support to her classmate will get her off the hook with the Universe for what she said when she handed me my pain pill.

Being a later life parent has its challenges but rarely do you expect them to come in the form of age-related sarcasm from your own kids. I was crossing the room one day when Jon, lying on the floor watching TV, reached out and wrapped his arms around my ankles. I smiled down at him, expecting an affectionate remark. What I didn't expect was, "I got your legs! Well, not exactly - maybe in another 40 years!"

Jon was an experienced quipster by that time, having tried out his early material on his grandmother when he was three. He was sick and I left him in the car with my mother while I ran into the pharmacy to pick up his prescription.

"Grandma," he said, "I'm gonna throw up."

"Just a minute, Jon," my mother said, scrambling around and searching for something he could vomit into. It took a minute, but she came up with an empty fast food bag, got out of the car using her cane, opened his door, leaned in and heard, "But not today."

Could there ever come a time when thinking of those moments with my kids won't make me smile? Maybe.

"But not today."

Certainly not today.

Bridge Years

The day that would have been my mother's 93rd birthday passed in January. The second anniversary of her death fell in February. She is still the first thing to slip into my consciousness at waking and the last to cross the backs of my eyelids, with the good and the bad and the slights and the love, just before I sleep. 

I have two kids in their upper teens, and lately I'm comparing my mother's situation when I was a young adult to the ones I face with my children. As I write this, my daughter is taking a "bridge year," in her case, a break between high school and college. Like many young people, she’s anxious about setting sail and hesitates over her options, even though I point out - more often than is helpful - that she doesn’t have to declare a major until later. Next year, if she's ready, she'll start at community college then head to Michigan State. That's the loose plan anyway, and it's given us a lot of time together. When we laugh, we are so like my mother and I, all those years ago.

Though I lived on campus and loved dorm life, I was home much of the time. I expected my parents to pick me up on Friday afternoons and take me home for the weekend - almost every weekend - a three-hour round trip. On Sunday nights, as though for the last time, I'd hug and kiss them and shout goodbyes, and they'd be gone - until they came back five days later. If they felt even the slightest discontent at doing all that driving, it never showed. All I saw were two happy, tired people. They would ask me how my week had been, and I, a merry egotist, would spend the next two days telling them. Much of that time was spent curled up next to my mother in my parents' bed, spilling the tea about all the things my father would rather not hear. We'd lie in that bed laughing and talking until my bone-weary dad would come in to say I really should be in my own bed.    

As to bridge years, I took one, too - between earning a BA and earning an income. My parents approved, provided I used that year to develop my writing skills, skills I'd just recently discovered. I'd sit at our dining table, portable Brother typewriter before me, plagiarizing a book on Laurel and Hardy. The plagiarizing wasn't intentional, and I'm sure my manuscript contained some embryo of an original thought. Still, if they ever peeked over my shoulder while I typed, my parents must have slipped away afterward to weep.  

I landed a full-time job as an employment agent when I was 23. I had gone to an agency for help finding a job and was hired on the spot. And that job proved to be a keystone in my career, so the bridge in my bridge year didn't collapse after all, except that I didn't need writing skills until much later. 

The other night I dreamed that I was an adult living with my parents when it occurs to me that I really should get a job. My mother asks if that means I'll be getting my own place, too. I tell her that I'll live at home while I train for the ideal job, and even after, since it will take time to save a down payment on a house. Upon learning that I plan to move out eventually, my mother sounds lighter than she has in years as she chats on the phone, sharing the news with friends. Later in the dream, I'm telling my father that he is absolutely correct to throw out all the knick-knacks and curio shelves before he redecorates the house, and then I question his choice of wall paint. I honestly did dream that dream exactly as described and hope I wasn't that big a jerk in real life. 

My mother and I were always close and are even now, in our own way, since some days she feels as real to me as if she were alive. As she lay dying, I drove almost 600 miles to surprise her. When I walked into her room, it was late, the lights dim, and two aides were struggling to make her more comfortable. They weren't struggling because she was hard to please; my mother was unfailingly appreciative and expressed her gratitude generously. But there wasn't a part of her body that wasn't breaking or broken. She was so ill and trying so hard to communicate her needs, that she didn't see me slip in. I sat by the window and when one of the aides looked up, I signaled her to keep quiet. When they left, my mother lay there, eyes closed. 

"Hi, Mom," I said in my best hushed-but-happy tones. It seemed that even a voice, too loud or harsh, might tear the tender body in the bed. She opened her eyes, looked toward me and started to cry. I cried too. I cried harder when, she said, "Oh, Mom. Mom." 

I gathered her in my arms and kissed the top of her head.

"It's Teece," I murmured against her hair. "I love you. I'm here now. I'm here."

"Oh, I'm so glad," she sobbed, and I wondered if she minded that my tears had wet her scalp.  You wonder a lot of odd things when you hold a dying parent. I doubt she minded, though. Very few things had ever bothered her. It took something as big as death to trip her up. For a while, I regretted telling her it was me when she thought I was her mother, but I think for her, by then I was child and mother. Besides, this was her bridge year, and who am I to say she didn't see her mother?    

Now that I've thrashed all this around in my head a few thousand times, I've vowed that the next time someone tells me about their kid who's studying abroad, nailing down a second master's, I will proudly share that my child might be living with me for years. 

Legs

When I was about 10 years-old, it occurred to me that I didn't like my legs. It happened as I was shooting them a sideways glance in a department store mirror and was horror-struck thinking that I had no kneecaps. 

Legs in the Skirt, copyright Teece Aronin. Available on
products at Redbubble.com/people/phylliswalter. 

In that place where my knees were supposed to bow gracefully outward, they didn't; it was as if my “knee yeast” never rose. I pointed this out to my mother who replied with that time-honored retort of mothers everywhere: "You're fine."

Of course, that experience in the department store wasn't enough to deter me from saying you're fine when my own kids complained. Karma bit me for it when I said, "You're fine" to my son minutes before he threw up all over his suit, his shoes, and the interior of my new car on the way to my aunt's funeral.

But that day in the department store did inspire me to buy my swimsuits online as soon as the technology became available.

The other thing is that I have big legs and "cankles," the seamless merge of ankles and calves. My biggest complaint about my cankles is that they make it hard to buy comfortable ankle socks. I'll bet there are enough women with cankles that if someone were to design the cankle sock, that person would make a fortune. I think the biggest argument for cankle socks is that they would be big enough to never get lost in the dryer. 

I haven't worn a dress, pantyhose, and heels at the same time in ages, but I remember that those three items, worn together, did great things for my legs. I still had big legs, but they were big, SEXY legs. Even the cankles stopped being cankles and transformed into the legs’ equivalent to great cleavage.  

My mother's legs were a lot like mine, and my father was crazy about her legs all their lives together. He loved to tell the story about the day he was following her up a steep stairway on his way to meet my grandmother and aunts for the first time. He said my mother kept nervously glancing down at him and clutching the hem of her skirt tight around her legs. He found her bashfulness endearing. 

A while back I was dating a man who said to me, "Your legs are perfectly fine."  

"True," I said, "They move, and they manage to support my weight."

 And I wonder why I'm single. 

He rolled his eyes. "You have what I think of as rich legs, and they're beautiful." When he said that, I got weak in my nonexistent knees. 

So, I'm going to rewrite that old song, When a Man Loves a Woman to sing to myself as needed. I'm calling it, When a Woman Loves Herself and Her Cankles.  

Giving Christmas the Old Heave-Ho-Ho-Ho

Those of us who celebrate Christmas are coming down to the final turn with just eight days left until the big day. Or the big show. Or the “really big shoe” as Ed Sullivan used to say. More appropos might be “the really big stocking.” At this point, however, many of us are ready to give Christmas “the really big boot.”

Until December 26, a lot of us will be losing it a little, and some of us have been losing it for quite a while already. About a week ago I looked down at my hands and realized that when I removed my nail polish the night before, I had overlooked my right thumb. Its nail coated in chipped “Santa Suit Red,” the thumb gazed balefully at me, pleading, “Don’t leave me this way.”

I wondered: Do other women fail to take the polish off some of their nails? The next morning, a coworker flashed the backs of her hands at me. Seven nails had the polish removed and three did not. Most definitely an observer of Christmas, I thought.

On Christmas Eve, years ago, one of my gal pals was coping with her first Christmas as the single mother of a toddler. Blowing her bangs out of her eyes, nose dusted with flour, she was baking cookies, wrapping gifts, screwing toy ovens together and bathing her child - all simultaneously thanks to the six temporary arms single mothers grow during the holidays. When a friend phoned to invite her to a Christmas Eve church service, my friend exclaimed, “I just don’t have time for Jesus tonight!” If Mary had said that on the first Christmas Eve, Christmas, as we know it, would have even more baked goods in it.

Maybe it’s because my children are older now, but I am much calmer these days at Christmastime. Gone is the pressure from telling a four-year-old that I was sorry, but the present he wanted was too expensive, only to have him say, “Don’t worry, Mama - Santa can get it for me.” Long past is the night I rocked my daughter in my arms, both of us in tears because I failed to understand that she didn't "really want the truth about Santa."

Today, my children are nearly grown, so if they suggest I make cheesecake this year, they won't be too disappointed when I lovingly point them to the kitchen, and if I do happen to be a little frazzled, text them the link to a fudge recipe.  

Two Tabbies and a Motherly Mutt

Poor Kitt. 

Kitt is a gray tabby, and she was our only pet until the kids and I adopted Hope, a high-strung, black and white mutt with low self-esteem and an intense desire to people-please. Since Kitt wasn't a people, Hope's concern didn't extend very far in her direction. So Kitt galumphed around the house, looking disgusted and put out. Still, over time, a certain partnership developed between them.

When Kitt and Hope were each about five years-old, another interloper moved in, an orange tabby kitten we named Silas. Hope, in her inscrutable wisdom, saw fit to mother Silas and would groom him, shepherd him, and watch over him as he suckled from a blanket amidst those stilts she calls legs. Hope was so busy with Silas that she pretty much forgot about Kitt.

Silas loved Hope and really did seem to think he'd been blessed with a new mother, which in a way, he had, although I'm not sure blessed is the right word. Hope could be overprotective and a tough disciplinarian. If I scolded Silas, Hope would spring to attention, cuff his ears, and herd him away. It was as if no one was going to discipline her child for long before she'd be back in charge, taking matters into her own paws. Still, Silas was thrilled so that was nice.

Hope let Silas climb on her, and chew on her, and pounce unexpectedly on her, while Kitt sat across the room, watching in that I-don't-care-but-you-know-I-really-do kind of way that only cats can. Sometimes even Hope, who is an energetic dog, looked worn out, as all mothers do at times.

Poor Hope.

When Silas did try to befriend Kitt, he didn't know how to do it in a way acceptable to her. Sometimes he would join her on my bed and the two would doze peacefully together - four feet apart.

But most of the time, Silas would chase Kitt and jump on her until Kitt took off for higher ground as if Silas were a flood. 

Sometimes I'd catch Kitt looking out the window and wondered if she was planning to leave. 
















Then something happened that neither Hope nor Kitt, and certainly not Silas could have foreseen. Silas began to grow up. He got bigger and acted more like a cat than a kitten. He wasn't as dependent on Hope anymore, though they still enjoyed each other's company, and more often, he was content just to be by himself. 

Silas also began enjoying the doings of us humans. He wanted to be nearby for our baths and our naps and especially our dinnertimes. He liked working on his big guy swagger so he could seem like an even more grownup cat.

Eventually, Silas was so grown up that he was just as likely to be the one looking at Hope like she was the crazy kid instead of the other way around like it used to be. 

Then one day I caught Silas looking out the window as though he wanted to leave. 

Poor Silas.

But Silas was willing to watch and wait just as Kitt had done, and maybe he'd learned his patience from her. Over time, the three of them found their way and settled in like their own little family, even though Kitt still looks more put out than the other two. 

Frankly, I think Kitt is happier than she looks. One day, not long ago while Silas napped, I glanced over and saw this. 

                                                                                                   Lucky Hope and Kitt.

All photos by Teece Aronin. Copyright protected. Some photos available for sale at Redbubble.com/people/phylliswalter.

Everything You Need to Know about OCD, Scrabble, and Life

One evening, years ago, my friend Lucy's phone rang, and the name showing in the phone's little window was "Ma."     

Image: Teece Aronin

"Hello?" 

When Lucy answered the phone, she heard distant conversation and could tell that people were playing cards - gin, to be exact. Lucy knew the voices well; they belonged to her mother, Darlene, her Aunt Zelda, and her sister, Jo-Jo. Darlene and Zelda were sisters. 

Her mother's phone was likely at the bottom of her bag, and something in the bag had likely butt-dialed Lucy. Assuming that were true, the women were probably at Jo-Jo's or Aunt Zelda's. If they were at Jo-Jo's, they were gathered around Jo-Jo's glass-top wrought iron dining table, always splattered with wet rings because Jo-Jo didn't know what a coaster was. 

If they were at Aunt Zelda's, they were sitting at the 1940's-era enamel kitchen table that had been Lucy's grandmother's. The table had caused a huge fight between Darlene and Zelda when Darlene accused Zelda of practically snatching it out from under the bowl of oatmeal their mother had nosedived into when she stroked out during breakfast one day. Darlene had complained that the oatmeal, like the body, wasn't even cold yet.     

"Hello?"

More ghostly chatter.  

"Hel-lo!"

Lucy yelled at least five more times before the conversation sucked her into its weird spell. 

Darlene: Her therapist told her it was free-floating anx-XI-ety. Have you ever heard of such a thing? Imagine having your anxiety hovering around over your head all the time - like a big, black cloud.

Aunt Zelda: For God's sake, Darlene; that's not what it means. It just means that you're anxious for no real reason. Your adrenaline cells have stomped their foot down on the gas pedal and now the pedal's jammed. Don't you ever watch Dr. Phil?

Darlene: No, Zelda, I don't. I didn't have the good fortune of marrying a barber, and therefore I have to work during the day.

Aunt Zelda: Jackie is a much-in-demand hair stylist, and besides, there's always TiVo. 

Aunt Zelda had a way of sounding sage, droning, and boastful at the same time. 

Jo-Jo (referring to her husband): I think Billy has anxiety. I don't know if it's free-floating or on the ground, but he definitely seems anxious. Sometimes it drives me up the wall because I literally have to scream at him to snap him out of it. He has issues up the win-wang."

Darlene: That's yin-yang.

Jo-Jo: Win-wang, yin-yang, wherever they are, they're there.

Darlene: You know, there's all kinds of anxiety. There's the free-floating kind, and there's panic attacks, and there's ODC . . .

Aunt Zelda: Good God, Darlene; it's not ODC, it's O-C-D - obsessive-compulsive disorder. It can make you do things and think things you don't want to. The obsessive part is thoughts you can't stop thinking, and the compulsive part is things you can't stop doing. Some people have one or the other, and some have both. I read about it on the internet. 

Jo-Jo: I think I have OCD. I can't stop thinking I want to divorce Billy, and I can't stop myself from screaming at him.

Aunt Zelda: I knew a girl in high school who, when she got her driver's license, she found she had a compulsion for driving into potholes. I mean no one knew she had OCD - she just happened to share the whole pothole thing with me one day and asked me if I thought it was weird. Of course, I tried to be reassuring and said it seemed perfectly normal to me. She just couldn't stop herself whenever there was a pothole coming. She'd even purposely veer right into them. I always emptied my bladder first if she was going to be driving.

Darlene: I might've known her. Who was she?

Aunt Zelda: I'm not telling, but she's a therapist now, which just goes to show you can conquer your demons. 

Darlene: Come on, Zelda; what's her name?

Aunt Zelda: I said I'm not telling.

Darlene: Oh, screw you, Zelda.

Jo-Jo: You know, I hate it when the two of you talk to each other this way.

Aunt Zelda: Shut the fuck up, Jo-Jo.

Jo-Jo: Dammit, Aunt Zelda. I hate it when you swear.

Aunt Zelda: Oh, I'm sorry. Jo-Jo, shut the frig up. How's that?

Jo-Jo: Better.

Aunt Zelda: Gin!

Darlene: Zelda, you asshole!

Jo-Jo: Ma! What did I just say?

Darlene: "You said that to your aunt."

Jo-Jo: I think next time we should play Scrabble.

Aunt Zelda: I once played Scrabble with a man who was a master at the game. When he played the word BEARS for 72 points, I said that's amazing! And you know what he said? He said: "It's not the bears, it's where you put the bears."

Darlene: I'd like to tell you where to put the bears.

Jo-Jo: You know, what that man said - about the bears - that applies to a lot of things in life. 

Aunt Zelda: That it does, my dear niece, that it does.

After more helpless shouting to her mother, Lucy hung up and went to bed. The next day, when she told her mother what happened, her mother yelled at her for eavesdropping.

Mercurochrome and the Mothers of Spring

All hail the Mothers of Spring! They were that fast, fierce, elite team of first responders always on the scene whenever their baby boomer kids bashed themselves up. The Mothers of Spring weren't real in the sense that they were a formally organized group - I made that up - but they were very real in every other way, especially to any child who ever cried out for hers or his while sorely in need of something akin to an Army medic.

Graphic by Teece Aronin

The Mothers of Spring are so named for the super-human ability to spring into action at a moment's notice, and also because, where I'm from, they were at their best during the spring season. You see, in my neck of the woods, the United States Midwest, Mothers of Spring shone brightest on those glorious days of April when it was warm in the sun and chilly in the shade. These are the days when children get so carried away by the beauty of it all, and too dazzled by the light, to look where they're going, and collide with something hard, like a section of buckled sidewalk. The Mothers of Spring deftly bandaged up their wounded warriors, first applying enough antiseptic to sterilize Lenny Bruce's toothbrush. And yes, Bruce did kiss his mother with that mouth.

Down through the annals of time the Mothers of Spring dabbed every boo-boo deemed in their mighty judgment as appropriate for it, with Mercurochrome.

Mercurochrome was a reddish-orange colored tincture that, once dried, became the reddish-orange skin stains kids of my generation wore as badges of honor. The cooler or more scrappy the kid, the more Mercurochrome stains he or she sported, or, conversely, the klutzier the kid was perceived as being. Baby boomers know what I'm talking about. 

In 1998, the Federal Drug Administration challenged the authority of the "Mothers of Spring, Mercurochrome Division" when it found that Mercurochrome was "not generally recognized as safe and effective. Mercurochrome wasn't flat-out banned, but it did get a lot harder to find. The comely flower-wreathed heads of the Mothers of Spring, especially those who were traditionalists or baby boomers, snapped up as one at this news, and many of the mommies yelled, "What the h€##?"

It turns out that Mercurochrome didn't get that first syllable, "merc," from nowhere. It got it because Mercurochrome contains mercury, an ingredient no self-respecting fish would be  caught dead with. While Mercurochrome didn't seem particularly hazardous when used as directed, it probably wasn't doing kids a whole lot of good. 

In an episode of I Hate Chris, the sitcom based on the childhood recollections of comedian Chris Rock, someone yells, "Chris got hit by a car!" and Chris' mother shouts, "I'll get the Robitussin!"

Robitussin is another must-have in the medicine cabinet of every good Mother of Spring.

Honey, People Like You Should Never Go to Those Places By Themselves

Recently I lost my mother. In its grief, my brain scrambles to recall details of her more recent self while things that happened years ago spring to mind in stark detail. My father, who died nearly 15 years ago, is often part of these recollections.

Image copyright, Teece Aronin

I have a cat named Kitt (hang in there; my parents will be back soon) who lives for the times she can spring onto a newly purchased or freshly laundered bedspread, smear her scent all over it, knead it, and just generally break it in for me. 

I also own a quilt, hand-stitched by my great-grandmother but stored away because Kitt would love to break it in for me, too.

The other day I brought home a store-bought quilt that reminded me of the one I keep in storage. The bonus was the sewn-on strips of colorful fabric and the rumply texture that would make any breaking-in Kitt could do less noticeable. 

The second the quilt hit the bed, so did Kitt. She rolled and stretched and followed her usual routine until the other usual thing happened: she got a claw caught in the quilt. With her arm stretched over her head, she freed herself with a thread-popping snap and I thought how badly I wanted to roll her up in the quilt and chuck her like a padded torpedo straight into a dumpster. Then I remembered a mess I got myself into with cats more than 20 years ago - and this is where my parents come in. 

I had just bought a little house. What would be nicer, I thought, than to adopt a cat to share it with? One weekend I drove to the nearest animal shelter and saw that the place was loaded with caged cats. An employee strolled over and pointed out a cage with four cats inside. Those four cats, she whispered, would be put down the next day if they didn't find homes this afternoon. I put my hand against the cage and one of the cats pressed its paw against my palm. I told the woman I'd take them all, keeping two and finding homes for two. It seemed so reasonable. 

Before I knew it, I was driving home with boxes of cats in the backseat. "Ninety-nine boxes of cats in the car! Ninety-nine boxes of cats!" I sang. The cats sang too. It felt good to save a life and saving four lives felt four times better. I got home, carried the boxes into the house two by two, then opened them gently so that the cats could become accustomed to their new environment. Cats are funny that way, you know; very timid when introduced to new surroundings.

After charging from their boxes like a swarm of killer bees, the cats made what appeared to be a coordinated attack on my house. One of them shimmied up the drapes where he hung like a spotted aerialist before flinging himself against the blinds. 

"Oh, my God, they're feral!" I screamed, as afraid of them as if they were bats or bears, even. I called my parents and blubbered into the phone. Somewhere in there, my mother caught the words cats and feral and figured out the rest. 

"Don't worry," she said, "I'll make some phone calls. We'll see you tomorrow."

The next morning my parents were at my door wearing reassuring smiles and leather gardening gloves. They helped me get the genies back in the bottles and loaded them in their car. My mother had found a woman who took in stray and feral cats. 

Before they left, my father gazed down at me with a loving but serious expression. "Honey," he said, "people like you should never go to those places by themselves." 

I don't get myself into feral cat predicaments anymore, but the reason for that is . . . well, I don't know exactly what the reason for that is because I adore cats, even ferals provided I know what I'm in for. But I like to think it's because I always listened to my parents. 

If they were with me now, I'd gladly listen to them all over again - even if the topic was feral cats.   

Heart Murmur

When my mother was 91, sick, weak, and giving up her life, I wanted to tell the healthcare workers the things I knew that they did not.  

That she once had a heart-shaped face, flawless skin, and was a redhead with freckled arms. 

That I had pictures of her, looking beautiful, like a starlet, playing badminton in her bathing suit and reclining in the sun. 

That she was so quick to laugh - but never at someone's expense, that she met people where they were, openminded, fully expecting to embrace them, and that, even in my teens, when I "should have been" rebelling, I would curl up with her at the end of the day and spill every drop of tea in the pot.   

Her caregivers could not have known that when I was seven and had a tonsillectomy, she spent the night by my hospital bed because the staff couldn't get her to go home - this, in the days when kids were kept overnight, and their parents booted out. 

Her nurses and techs knew none of that and were kind to her anyway. But one impatient word, one careless yank on her gown, one exasperated sigh in her direction, and I would defend my mother as she had defended me in the face of child-hating neighbors with perfect yards and the first-grade teacher who said I couldn't read - with all the conviction of an outraged mother bear. 

Because our days came and went like heartbeats, but then there was a murmur, and now I saw my mother as she had once seen me. 

The Long Arm of the Law

What do Matt Dillon, Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp and my mother have in common? Each could put the fear of God into any gunslinger, or in the case of my mother, into her runny-nosed, mercurochromed, wisenheimer kids every time one of them lipped off at another. None of us would have dared lip off at Mom. 

You could be in any room in our house and my mother could rap you in the back of your head from any other room in the house, and not take so much as one step in your direction.

You'd be standing in the middle of the living room basking in the glow of having just called your brother a sticky stalactite booger, Mom would be in the kitchen and WHAP.

She could bounce braids with one of those four-fingered love taps, love taps that seemed devoid of any love short of the kind in Scared Straight. These raps in the head never hurt, but they got our attention. And in truth we knew she loved us with everything she had.

Eventually my brothers and I resorted to experimental methods of insulting each other hoping to fly under our mother's radar.

We tried whispering our insults upstairs when Mom was sweeping the sidewalk . . . and WHAP.

We passed notes to each other in the basement while Mom was in the bathtub and . . . WHAP.

We coded messages to each other using secret decoder rings while Mom was next door having coffee and . . . WHAP. 


I wish I could describe to you what these encounters with our mother looked like, but it's a little like that problem people have after near death experiences when they find human speech wobbly, puny and inadequate to the task of describing something so astonishing.


One day, years after we'd grown up, my brother was driving somewhere with his kids, my mother, and me. My little nephew was on the driver's side in the back seat and my mother was on the passenger side up front. Then my nephew said something of which my mother disapproved and  . . . WHAP. My nephew never saw it coming.

"Whoa! What was that?" he yelped, not hurt, but surprised.

"That son," said his father, "was the long arm of the law."