I Love You #noediting #justpostit

Those of us who aren't mothers, and no longer have mothers on this earth, can forget that there is a day designated to moms. It's not that I've forgotten my mother, quite the opposite, but Mother's Day, in my shelter in place situation, the cards and bouquets advertised for such an occasion have slipped by without my notice. When I received an email from The Mosquito Story Slam, our Outer Cape version of live storytelling, inviting participants to join in a live zoom with the prompt, "What Would Mother Say?" in celebration of this day, I thought of the answer my mother would always give when we'd ask her what she wanted for Mother's Day, "A bath". 

I'm not a participant in the Mosquito, but I have worked at several of them, and I enjoy listening immensely, always promising Vanessa, the host, that I will "the next time". Alas, I had a BlueJeans conflict, and perhaps that led me to my keyboard to sit down and remember and try to put something together, if only just for me.

So here goes... Things Mother Would Say

If I was upset or maybe throwing a tantrum or who knows - it's hard to see the reflection of your child self - but I can certainly see Mom, hands jauntily on hips with a slight smile sing-songing "Sarah Bernhardt Sarah Bernhardt" At 5, 6, 7 and 8, I didn't know who she was referring to, but upon learning she had once been a famous actress, I'd gleam with what I thought was a compliment. When I was older, she tell me to "Go outside and emote, yell as long and loud as you want. I don't care what the neighbors think. Go EMOTE".  If we didn't know the meaning of a word, you were sent to the large dictionary in the dining room to "look it up".

We had to be in our bedrooms by 8 or 9 pm with lights out an hour later. She would stand at the bottom of the stairs and say "Don't make me come up there with the wooden spoon!" My sister was the only one who didn't have a wooden spoon broken across her bottom. She would tell us that she and her siblings got the hairbrush "bristles down" as if pacify us. Later, when we were adults, there were moments that she'd stop whatever she was doing, and exclaim with tears in her eyes, "I beat you!" and we'd laugh at her because most of the time, we deserved it. 

If something was misplaced, she'd say "I can't have anything nice with you kids around!" When the missing item was discovered somewhere, she wouldn't apologize, she'd just act as if it had never been missing.

Upon leaving the house for a field trip, or birthday party or any social event, "Don't forget when you leave this house, you're representing the Williams family!"

My mother wasn't one for boundaries, not the burst in your room way, although we were not allowed to lock our doors, but in the conversational way.  Sometimes, she'd listen to her Roger Williams album and look wistfully out the kitchen window and say "Guillermo" which was not my father's name.

When we would complain about our Saturday chores, "What do you think we had kids for?" If we asked for something, clothes, toys, whatever, she'd say "You've got more (insert object here) than Spaldings got balls".

And later when I got older and we'd have a long chats on the phone, "I never really wanted to have kids" and "I didn't really like being married." I remember that conversation because I told her she had to get some friends her own age. I just learned what boundaries meant! She would always tell me that I had a revisionist version of my childhood. We joked that we should write a book called "I Don't Remember it That Way". 

Upon my first unbearable heartbreak, I called her for emotional support telling her I couldn't get out of bed. Her advice, "Pretend it didn't happen". She told us that she and her siblings were not allowed to cry in the house she grew up in Fort Dodge Iowa. We were not allowed to call her Mommy, but neither we were encouraged to call her "Mother" as she called hers. "I'm Mom" but to our friends, she was "Sally". My aunt later told me that in that house, my grandparents never told their kids that they were loved, and they weren't hugged. The same in my father's household in Framingham, MA. She'd told me "The way your parents raised you is the polar opposite of how we were."

Before we went to bed, we sit on either side of her while she read to us from "Oscar Lobster's Fair Exchange", "The Wind in the Willows", "James and the Giant Peach." 

Upon saying goodnight, "I love you"
Ending a phone call: "I love you"
Signing off on a letter, email or postcard, "I love you, Mom".