Mommy Dearest

I can remember the first time I had to go to sleep. Mom said, “Steven, time to go to sleep.” I said, “But I don’t know how.” She said, “It’s real easy. Just go down to the end of tired and hang a left.” So I went down to the end of tired, and just out of curiosity I hung a right. My mother was there, and she said “I thought I told you to go to sleep.”
– Steven Wright

When I was a child I was like that little boy in The Hours who was obsessed with his mother and never wanted to be away from her. I cried when I went to school and pretty much hated every day I was forced to go. Mom always told her kids that they could be anything they wanted to be-but unlike the standard issue Stage Mom, she never did much in the way to telling us what that something should be.

Mom was a good forty years older than me and she has been dead lo these many years. I used to talk to her on the phone everyday, and I still have the occasional moment when I find something to tell her about before I remember.

Mom was pretty much a bitter old woman by the time I really got to know her-but then, she was pretty much a bitter younger woman as well. Like all mothers she was a big fan of guilt and her favorite quote was How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.

I’m sure she did the best that she could, but most of my memories are of bad meals, not enough to eat, and constant reminders of what a disappointment I was to her. Mom always had it in the back of her mind that at least one of her seven children would be millionaires and be able to take care of her in the manner she always thought she deserved. None of us were then, nor now, millionaires.

On the Plus side, Mom loved to read and so I had access to the works of Shakespeare, Chekhov, Poe, and countless other writers she collected in various and sundry Great Writers collections. I was well ahead of my classmates in recognizing the works of great poets, great writers, and great artists. Mom had dreams of being a painter at one time and joined a book club which supplied her with lithographs by The Masters. Our obsessions with the castaways on Gillian’s Island was supplemented with does of Masterpiece Theater-I was always thrilled by the occasional bit of nudity.

Mom never spanked us and was never a fan of that counting nonsense made so popular by Dr Spock. We just pretty much ran wild and were left to police ourselves. We were a thankless lot, now that I think about it.

So thanks, Mom, for putting up with us.

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