Mother's Day

No funny quips today, no long essay - just a brief post to get some words on the page.  There's a lot I could write about, today of all days, but I'll refrain.  It seems sometimes that my grief is like a supermassive black hole and that if I circle too close to it, it will devour me whole.

My mother died a little more than six months ago, but I'm not going to write about that now.  I may never write about it, in fact.  There's too much emotion - regret, anger, sadness, rage, resignation - and I don't know how to sort it out right now.  She wasn't a perfect mother, and I wasn't a perfect daughter, and we were both too much alike and too different.  She had a dysfunctional father who never told her he loved her, and she struggled with how to be a good parent with no real model on how to do that.  Despite any failings, she had moments where she shined as a mother.  Here's one:

When I was in the fifth grade, our crone teacher gave us a math test that was beyond our comprehension.  We all failed it, and as she passed out our graded tests to us, she ranted and raved:  we were stupid.  We were lazy.  We were all going to end up on welfare like our stupid, lazy parents.  I was in the "special" kids class - once a week, I was pulled out of class to do fun things with other bright kids.  When our crone teacher passed my test back to me, she rapped me over the head and said, "not so bright now, are you?"  I was crushed - it was my first failing grade.

I went home in tears, certain that my parents would beat me for failing so spectacularly.  I handed the test over to my mother to sign, and she looked it over.  These math questions, she assured me, were too tough for fifth graders.  She signed the test, but refused to give it to me.  She wanted to give it to the crone herself.

And she did just that.  The next day, she drove me to school, marched me into my classroom, and in front of my classmates, she gave the old crone holy hell for a good fifteen minutes until the principle came to remove her.  She then gave the principle holy hell for letting the teacher call us lazy and stupid.  For the rest of the school year, she was universally known as the coolest mom.  And we were never again called stupid or lazy by the old crone.*

So that is my happy memory for Mother's Day.

(My parents, at the beginning of the Age of Aquarius.)

*Old crone fun fact:  she eventually ended up in the nursing home, and one of her former stupid, lazy students ended up being a nurse that she relied on to give her proper medication and care.