I absolutely loved that story of your mom giving you and your siblings a Hell Ride. Shades of something Betty Draper from Mad Men would do. I miss the way it used to be.
One story from my youth happened during summer break. My stay-at-home mom wanted us to stop playing under the sprinkler for no good reason... probably because of the noise we were making outside and she had a headache. We ignored her... and the next time the kitchen door opened she came out and cut the garden hose with a carving knife.
That same green gardenhose to this day has that hose repair splicer on it on the day mom cut the hose.
Hahahaha...that’s GREAT! I love the fact that the repaired hose is still there!
My mom was great. She had her flaws, as we all do, but as a loving mom, she was the best. I miss her so much. I think there were times she just had a difficult time coping with us (six kids, all a year apart!) and when she took the belt to us, she put the fear of God into us because she seemed so unhinged. She was half Italian and half Armenian, and she had the heated passion and temper from both sides.
The poor woman, we made it so damned hard for her sometimes, and she often couldn’t maintain her composure.
But, as you can see from my freep page, she was an attractive woman, outspoken (She often bridled at having to play the “Good Naval Officer’s Wife” and occasionally would cause some problems for my dad by mouthing off at parties to superior officers she didn’t like) but she played her role well when she had to. She sucked it up and kept the family together all those years my Dad was away at sea, and when he wasn’t, figured out how to manage his alcoholism.
I was a pretty slow kid, and had a great deal of difficulty in school, particularly math. I had to go to summer school for many years. But while my siblings were out playing, I had to stay inside with my mom, and she drilled me over, and over, and over again on my times tables. I would put my head down on my arms on the table, and she would pull my arms away, make me sit up and do the flash card drills. 2x1=2...2x2=4...2x3=6, etc. She sat with me, chain smoking cigarette after cigarette, one hand tapping the ash into the tray, the other hand holding up the card. Instead of taking the time to lay down and rest on the couch and read a magazine or take a short nap (things she could have done (and needed to do) by sending me outside as well) she spent the time trying to teach me, the unwilling and sullen pupil.
I remember her teaching me the alphabet. She was so patient. And when I learned it and could recite the alphabet, she bought me one of the best toys I ever owned, “The Fighting Lady”, a huge (for me) gray US Navy destroyer on wheels that had lots of moving parts...perfect for my boyish and active imagination.
She and I fought long, hard battles of stubbornness over food, specifically onions.
I could not eat onions. They made me gag. But she tried for years. I would often sit at the table for hours after everyone else had gone and the table had been cleared except for my plate. My brothers told me later in life that they admired my dogged stubbornness and tenacity in holding out. My mother would take the plate and give it to me the next morning, and I still wouldn’t eat. I didn’t care if she made me sit there at the table for six hours, I didn’t care if I went days without food, I would do it as long as I didn’t have to eat the onions. At some point, I cannot remember when, she stopped trying and we made our peace with it. Today, how I love her for that.
I was bullied for a stretch of years by my older brother (now my best friend) and on occasion, some older kids his age. I was a bit bigger and muscular than most boys my age, though uncoordinated and saddled with the black plastic framed glassed dubbed “BCD glasses” in the military (Birth Control Device glasses). I absorbed a fair share of beatings, and when my mom would get out of me what happened when she saw me all beat up and disconsolate, she would hug me and say “Bobby! Sit on them! You are bigger than they are!”
What a lady. She probably wanted to beat my brother and those other boys, but she knew that would be the wrong thing, and that I had to work it out for myself. Which I eventually did. And I know how difficult that must have been for her, to make me fight my own fights.
You see, I was a preemie. I was born at 7 months, and was only 2 lbs, 11 oz back in the Fifties. My ears were pointed, I had webbed hands and feet, and the doctor held me in the palm of his hand. She had been taking an anti-nausea drug, and it had caused abnormal bleeding, forcing her to stay motionless in bed for weeks before I finally popped out ahead of schedule.
She would always say to me when we were out of earshot of my siblings, that I was her favorite. I knew she loved us all the same. But to this day, my brothers and sisters teasingly say to me “You were always her favorite!” I know I wasn’t, but she sure made me feel as though I was.
She has been gone now five years, and it seems like a lifetime ago that I noticed she had turned into a wisp of a woman a few months before she passed on.
God, how I miss her. But, at the same time, it is nice, because I can smile and feel wonderful when I remember her!