0509blog
Mother’s Requirements
Mothers are the most underappreciated people around and they are also the easiest to exploit because they feel they must care for their kids no matter what and the kids know that and voila, mother abuse, although the abuse is usually subtle like my expecting mom to have dinner ready promptly by 6 or have a good explanation why not or feeling put upon if I was asked to pick up the dirty clothes strewn about my bed room making it look like a dumpster or God help me, asking me to mow the grass and walk the dog. Oh, the inhumanity of it all.
Well not all mothers seek perfection, I’m sure there are many who treat their children like one more unwelcome and totally unwanted pain in the neck and that they are the one thing that had gotten in the way of being happy and they don’t feed the kids anything even remotely nutritional and they smack and whack, curse and otherwise abuse their offspring but that goes against the grain for most who see their roles as handed down by God, meaning that if they violate the holy requirements of motherhood, there will be a big price to pay.
I don’t know how my mother survived without losing her mind to the daily pressures of suddenly being a single mother with three children who were not always on the best of relations, a mother who had cancer twice, who had to go to work so soon after my father died, whose second husband suddenly fell over in the kitchen, dead, while his still lit cigarette left a stain on the linoleum that was forever a sign of Stanley’s passing. The thing was my mother did what she thought was right and that put caring for the kids first and her own welfare second.
My mother never complained, well let me be more specific, she always complained if I didn’t do my chores around the house which were about as minimal as possible. By never complaining, I mean she never cooked dinner and mentioned that she burned herself while picking up a hot frying pan and she was always available to be the cabbie on call, regardless of whether a cold had kept her up all night. And she was dependable to nurse me back to health when I was in the throes of a cold that seemed ready to take my life and always she bought me a Superman comic to read while I lay dying or so I thought.
She sheltered me from the storm of reality or at least she tried. Even when she was diagnosed with colon cancer, I didn’t know about it for quite a few months, as I was told that she had to go in the hospital for a few days for something minor. It was the same the second time she was diagnosed with cancer and still, she survived. I was probably 11 for the first time she battled cancer so I don’t think I was too young to be told but maybe she thought I had already been through enough and needed to be kept in the dark. I appreciate that.
She was always available to provide me with warmth and comfort and a friendly ear even if her advice was not always on the mark like the time I came home from college reeling from a bad drug episode and she told me to take a nap and have something to eat. And speaking of eating, I am sure I complained when she cooked liver and her reaction was not anger but just a look that said “after all I’ve done, the least you can do is eat the liver” and that was enough to make me eat the horrible-tasting cow organ but generally her food was quite tasty.
The most comforting thing about my mother was that I always felt welcomed by her and I know that sounds a bit unremarkable but I am sure there are families where the children are not appreciated and their parents let them know of their each and every flaw and never miss a chance to tell the children that they are rotten kids and the reason their mother is miserable. I didn’t grow up that way and in fact, the only flaws I had was failing to un-dumpster my room, actually that was the only flaw that my mother knew about and of course, there were other flaws which I will not elaborate. When I got older, my main flaw, and one my mother never failed to remind me about was that if I didn’t go to Jewish services or observe the Jewish holidays, then I could not possibly be a Jew, even though I argued that I was born a Jew, am Jewish to the bone and always will be a Jew, but that’s not good enough if you don’t go to services.
Another facet of the good mother, which my mother had in abundance, was that she always made me feel that my needs always trumped her welfare, that she would always put me first, whether it was putting a safety pin on my blanket to keep me from kicking it off in my sleep or scrubbing me as a toddler with this weird little brush that looked like a tugboat, and all the while she was doing these things, she seemed to be having fun, although that remains a deep mystery to me. Funny I don’t remember her ever being sick, except for the two times she had cancer. Or maybe she just never complained, except about my failure as a Jew.
As I assume that I was like every child who ever lived in that I never thanked my mother for anything and more likely just figured it was her job, whatever my needs were. It was only when I got older that I came to the stark realization that the sun and the planets did not revolve around me and that I was not touched by God, so when that realization occurred, I made it a point to call my mother regularly and visit frequently so that I could enjoy her great food and show her how good a job I thought she did.
And she never yelled if I ate the last cookie or finished the milk or even tracked mud in the house. My mother died when she was 92, so happy mother’s day, mom, I want you to know I really appreciated all you did and I hope your resting comfortably.