Sadly, Mother’s Day is no longer celebrated directly in our household. When you get to be my age (best of luck there, Sparky!), the natural cycle of aging has more than likely removed one or both of your parents from this plane of existence, even with the near mythic longevity enjoyed by the habitués of the Great White North. That rugged coastline of Upper Michigan and northern Wisconsin is all that stands between the U.S.A. and the envious Canadian hordes, and we tend to live long and prosper (more or less) up there.
So I had meant to write about some other mothers, like the “Mother of All Super Bowl Scandals,” involving Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and his suspiciously under-inflated game balls, or perhaps the “Mother of All Wing nut Fantasies,” which involves Texas Gov. Greg Abbot mobilizing the Texas State Guard in an effort to thwart a planned military invasion of his state this summer under the code name “Jade Helm 15.” That exercise will involve U.S. Navy Seals and U.S. Army Rangers, as well as other law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and Mexico, and will take place in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. (Note that the Texas State Guard is NOT the Texas National Guard, but rather a “state militia” under the command of the governor.)
Non-fringe news sources have reported the exercise is not a planned military invasion of the Lone Star State by federal forces in black helicopters. That did not stop Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert from pointing out the map of the exercise shows a definite bias towards operations in heavily Republican areas, a situation which the Government must correct immediately.
Other non-mainstream media have connected the code name of the exercise to the ancient Egyptian Book of Thoth, by which they now identify President Obama as a “secret Muslim/Kenyan/Ancient Egyptian resurrected deity” with a secret plan to invade and control portions of the nation he is currently in charge of.
But these savories will have to wait. As necessity is indeed the “mother of invention,” and the order went out for a Mother’s Day-oriented story for this week’s edition, I began to comb the archives for some ideas from Mother’s Day past. Here are some of those:
“As a kid, Mother’s Day more resembled a family reunion than a one-person honorific, as the house would be jammed with grandmothers and aunts and their various clan attendants. It took me a while to understand why my Mom was not as thrilled as the other “older women” in the family at the approach of her special day. I finally realized that the other parental siblings had long skedaddled, too far to justify a trip home, leaving Mammy pretty much holding the baby when it came to celebrating her day with the other family mothers.”
“I can remember her pirouetting around the kitchen as she deftly parried advice and helpful grandmotherly hands during the preparation of the Mother’s Day dinner: Her kitchen, her rules. You were welcome to come in for a brief chat, but hands off the hardware! Yooper women are nothing if not stoic, and being of full Finnish descent, she had that trait in spades. And a snifter of the vintage cooking sherry didn’t hurt, either.”
One enduring untold memory involves the Old Man and Granddad standing at the kitchen sink with some of the older fellows after they were conned into doing the dishes after one particularly well-attended Mother’s Day feast. They stared at the heaping pile of china as if it has just landed from outer space and actually did manage to finally wash a dish or two before the ominous clatter of porcelain on porcelain brought the ladies rushing into the kitchen to rescue as much of the dinner service as they could.
The gentlemen then repaired to the sauna, which was a free-standing structure far enough from the house to be out of convenient earshot. Peering in the windows, us kids noted that a large tub of ice had mysteriously appeared therein, from which protruded aluminum cans bearing the familiar red, white and blue logo of the Pabst Brewing Company. A smuggled transistor radio provided the details of the afternoon ball game, while the ladies in the house contentedly groused about their “helpless” spouses and their kitchen ineptitude.
And then:
“When I was away at school, it was sometimes easy to forget the significance the holiday retained back at home, as a callow student could be swayed from his familial responsibilities by a Sunday afternoon kegger or some such frivolity during his long journey through the halls of academia. The Old Man, however, could be relied upon to make that special call, usually on the Wednesday night, reminding me that things might not go well on my next home visit should I neglect my filial duty. Thanks, Pop.”
And if I’m in the GWN around Mother’s Day these days, I still deliver flowers. But just the one rose, now.
