No Mama's Boy

When I saw the title, ”I love my mommy” over at TheWriteJerry, my first sarcastic Sicilian thought was, “more like ThatFruitJerry”. Then I saw it was a guest post from one of his female friends, and suddenly it was okay. A few days later though, Darrell followed suit. In the course of his post, he talked about how Southern guys will compete over who has the best mom. It's definitely not like that in the North. In elementary school, if the other kids saw my mom give me a kiss before she dropped me off, it would be yet another invitation to ridicule. After the first few years of separation anxiety wore off, any attempt to hug or kiss me resulted in squirms of protest. A mother’s affection isn’t cool if you’re a guy.

For an only child, I was a handful, and when my dad was at work and I wasn't in school, my mom had a lot to deal with. Certainly the Dreaded Wooden Spoon of Discipline kept me in check, until that blessed day it broke across my posterior. When I'd get lost in imaginary worlds with my toys and she'd suggest I “do something constructive”, I'd always take her literally and get out blocks, an Erector Set, or LEGO®s. When I'd waste too many hours on my Intellivision, she'd take a pair of scissors and cut the power cord to the small black and white television I had it attached too. It was originally her TV, but I'd taken over. My dad had to splice the wire back together many times. When I refused to clean my room, she'd gather everything in my room and throw it into one big pile in the center for me to organize. That usually kept me occupied until my dad got home.

My mom scared me when I was little. Looking down at the mellow little old lady she's become, it's hard to remember a time when she'd hurl dishes or yell. My dad got to be the nice guy, to come home from work and play catch or give me a comic book. My mom had to be the disciplinarian, teach me right from wrong, and sometimes punish me. A few of my early comics were ripped in half again and again in fits of anger at my disobedience. She'd always feel bad later on, retrieve the scraps, and tape the issues back together. By the time I was in high school and collecting comics seriously with my own money, she really couldn't touch them. I still have the original 6 or 7 that she ripped up and taped.

As scary as my mom could be, there were many times I was scared I might lose her. Medicine has advanced to the point that her asthma is now controllable, but when I was a kid we had to visit the emergency room a few times after some severe attacks. My mom was always waiting for me after school or CCD class. One night after class, I found a police car waiting instead of my mom. She had to go to the hospital, my dad was at work, and she couldn't reach our neighbors. When I was in first or second grade, she spent a week in the hospital with pneumonia, leaving my dad and I to fend for ourselves. I remember eating a lot of toast and cereal that week.

My mom was fierce in her protection of me. She always wanted the names of kids who beat me up, but it was embarrassing to have her come in and complain to the principal, especially when the response was, “if he'd just hit them back once, they'd leave him alone.” When I sprained a finger in a game of dodgeball and told no one until I got home and my mom saw my pinky was purple and the size of my thumb, she was in the principal's office the next day. My mom was tough on me, but tougher on my enemies. My mom was involved.

As an adult, I'm sometimes annoyed when my mom asks me to do something, or even asks about my day. As skilled in the garden as she is in the kitchen, she's always asking me to take pictures of things she's grown around the yard. Yesterday when the sun made a surprise appearance, I relented and did what she said. This morning when she wanted to go to an early mass so she could go to the local arboretum with my dad for the day, I grudgingly got up early to take her. As we both got older, when yelling at me no longer got results, guilt came into play. I’ve often heard, “I cook, I clean up after you and your father, the least you can do for me is ______.” or “I spent 12 hours in labor but that's okay, you don't have to take 10 minutes to drive me to the store.” Incidentally, I have no idea how long it actually took for me to be born. The number of hours increases every time I hear about it.

I don't care that today is Mother's Day. I'm not going to gush about my mom's lasagna, or how she mended my clothes. I won't talk about her symptom book, how when I was sick or worried it might be something worse she'd look up the symptoms and alleviate my concerns, preventing me from developing into a hypochondriac. She might have entertained my friends with crafts like making clay molds of toys and pouring plaster of Paris in, or making our own giant bubble makers using string, straws, and a bucket of detergent, but those are things any mother should do anyway. So what if years of clipping coupons and embarrassing me by fumbling for them at cash registers helped her and my dad save up enough money for a poor couple to send their only son to a private high school and on to college? So what if I got steak and corn fritters every birthday? It's just not cool to sound like a mama's boy, so I won't jump on the bandwagon like Darrell or Jerry's friend. She got a card from me, and seeds, and gardening gloves, and snacks, and I helped my dad order some old Shirley Temple VHS cassettes for her. Later we'll probably go out to dinner, maybe to the Boston Market. That's enough. I'm 31 years old and she still calls me her “baby”. I'm certainly not going to waste a post on my mother.



Fine, I love my ma. If you tell anyone, I'll kill you.