My Mom Is Chuck Norris

My mother is about 4’9”. Most of the women in the family are short. My mother’s stature is such that she just makes other people look bigger when they are around her. I stand next to her in all photos and at major family events. I tower over her like a behemoth.

My mother once rabbit punched a Gold-Medal winning wrestling coach because my brother fractured his elbow during a practice. This muscle bound giant scurried back from the tiny woman as she flurried her tiny fists into his chest. I have not seen fear like that outside of small furry creatures and bachelors trying to escape long-term relationships.

My mother lost the nerves on the right side of her face when she contracted Bels Palsy when pregnant with my younger brother. To this day I tell him he’s the reason Mom can’t smile fully anymore.

When my mother runs, her feet and fists churn at four times the speed of mortal man. However, she only moves at about a ¼ of the distance. We call this the Patsy Shuffle.

My mother became a middle school lunch lady when I was in seventh grade. A bunch of kids starting teasing me. I explained that I don’t pay for the ala carte desserts at the end of the day. Then I walked away smiling, eating a TastyKlair pie. They stopped making fun of me.

My mother would tell stories that would branch off in endless tangents, but would always end up with the one time she served on Jury Duty. For example: “Oh, your son plays baseball? We just went to the Red Sox game with Brian and Todd when we went to visit him in Boston. It was so much fun, Jimmy and I split a hot dog and a beer. Hot dogs! Todd just got a grill for his new apartment, so we gave him all the leftover meat in the freezer. Some chicken patties and a few Omaha Steaks. Omaha Steaks! Brian just drove cross country to California and he was passing through all these crazy cities, and I told him to be careful, because I didn’t want any criminal stealing his car. Steal his car! I was on jury duty once and our case was about this guy who stole his wife’s car.”
It never fails. When she and my aunt would get together, they could actually tag team on topics. It would still always end up at Jury Duty.

I wrote a play for my mother called “At Least We’re Together”. The title comes from an incident when we attempted to go to Busch Gardens in Williamsburg (right near where I was born). As we went into the park, there was a torrential downpour. We ran back to the car. The rain started to subside. We started to head back when it rained again, even harder. We piled in the cars, pissed off and dripping. She turned around from the front seat, goofy smile on her face and said in a high-pitched nasally cadence, “Well, at least we’re together.” This became our battle cry whenever the day was going shitty.

In the play, my mother’s character is an eternal optimist who gets mugged and manages to put a bright spin on everything. My mom doesn’t like it, because in the end, the mom shoots the hell out of the mugger. My dad thinks it’s HILARIOUS.

I asked my mother what she wanted to be when she grew up. If she never had any ambitions beyond just being a mom. She said all she ever wanted to be was a mother and a wife. So she worked really hard at that and making everyone happy.

I almost kicked a feminist grad student in the forehead because she accused women like my mother of not being “real women”. I told her that “real women” can do anything they want, like raise fantastic kids, while “fake girls” like her end up dying alone in their apartments, next to a half-empty wine bottle, being partially devoured by their cats.

My mother does not understand how to work a computer. However, she can videotape any program on any channel with a series of four VCRs she has set up on different televisions in different rooms of the house.

My mother doesn’t go to bed before 1 AM. Instead, she stays up watching the hours of television she has recorded for herself. Inevitably she falls asleep on the couch, in her giant recliner. My father goes to earlier and earlier as he gets older. Eventually, I think their times will meet. Somewhere around age 88 at about 3 PM.

When I was home from college, my mom and I used to amuse ourselves by quizzing each other with 80’s Trivial Pursuit cards. If you got 4 out of the 6, you got to keep the card.

When I was in the school spelling bee, my mother quizzed me on the words every day, for at least two hours. Not out of any sort of fierce drive or forcefulness, but just because I had to go over the words. When I made the finals, she asked me if I wanted to do a couple more words before we left. Those words were valedictorian and asterisk. I spelled it “a-s-t-e-r-i-k”. She said, “No, remember, it’s RISK. RISK. With an S.”

I won the championship that year. The word was “asterisk”.

My father and brother will not ride roller coasters. All through my youth, my mother would ride every single roller coaster with me, screaming bloody murder the entire way.

My mother’s mother died when she was 17. My mother’s father died when I was 5. My mother’s sister died a few years ago. My mother’s ambition in life was to make it to 40.

My mother adopted my aunt’s cat, Finnegan. He’s a nasty, moody, finicky, snot-nosed pussy, who gets overfed and lavished with attention. She refers to him as our third brother. Whenever she sends money for gifts, she explains how she spent an equal amount on the cat.

My mother cannot spell. She tried to write a note to the office explaining that: “Brian would not be able to attend scoccor practise. He has an apointmint at the orthadentist.” I told her to just write: “Brian can’t practice. He has to go to the doctor.” She misspelled practice. And my name.

My mother pronounces words the words “lent” and “phantom” with an “h” after the “t’s.” She claims its because she from Scranton. My father is also from Scranton. So is most of my immediate family. None of them do it.

For mother’s day, I took my mother to see “Election”, because she really likes Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick. At one point in the movie, there’s a tremendous closeup of an actor saying of Reese, “Her pussy gets so wet…” I turned slowly to my mother. She looked over at me. We both sat uncomfortably through the rest of the movie.

I thanked Alexander Payne personally for ruining Mother’s Day.

When I was in college, I had to walk about a half a mile to the post office boxes to get my mail. I told my mom I’d get bummed if there was no mail. For the next three months, I would receive a different card in the mail from my mom. I still have one of the Bill and Opus ones.

As a surprise for their 35th wedding anniversary, and my brother’s grad school graduation, I decided to fly myself and my future wife home to Pennsylvania. I kept telling my mom I wouldn’t be able to afford airfare. She told me that Dad was trying to raise the money for tickets, but he couldn’t afford it. On the day of the party, my brother had to come pick us up from the airport. All afternoon my mother had been calling him, berating him for not helping with the preparations for his own party. She called him three times, getting progressively nastier, because he wouldn’t travel the ¼ mile from his house to their home. Little did she know he was actually an hour away at the Philadelphia Airport, picking up her other son. When we showed up, Todd snuck in the house and said, “Hey, I brought some help.” When she saw me, she couldn’t stop shouting, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God!” I almost killed my mother. Guess the surprise would have been on me.

When I was nineteen, and a summer camp counselor, I heard a rumor that one of the kids had beaned my mom in the head with a soft pretzel. He was eleven. I pulled him aside and told him that if I found out it was true, I was going to jam a fishhook through his intestines and run them up the flag pole. He told me he didn’t do it. I told him that if anyone ever did anything to my mom while he was at that school, I’d find him, because I could get to him and I would bury him alive in a box full of starved rats. He didn’t go on the haunted hike that year. My mother never got accosted that I heard of again. He went on to become one of our best counselors.

To this day, I cannot pronounce the words “berry” or “yesterday” without sounding funny. Nobody else in our family does that.

I dominate bar trivia. Especially anything pop culture. Particularly from the 80’s.

My mother is my date to the Oscars. I promised her after I became a theatre major.

When I smile, it looks kind of wry, because I only turn up one corner of my mouth. It’s because since I was younger, I’ve been imitating my mother’s smile.

My Mother, My Child

Dear Mom,

Where to begin?

I know the last several years have been incredibly difficult for you. They have been for all of us -- but for you especially. And I also know that I can be judgmental, pushy, and aggressive in my opinions -- especially when it comes to you. You: The warrior in my life. You: The omnipresent.

I look at you as you are right now, today, and I see a strong, beautiful, and scared woman. And for the first time, I see you nervously unfolding the wings of trust and hope -- wings that maybe opened once or twice before in your life, only to be snapped shut in fear or confusion. I look at you and I don't see a victim; I look at you and see all your strengths and faults, all your weaknesses and wisdom.

It wasn't always like this, I know.

It has never been easy for you, I also know.

If I were to tell someone of your childhood, it would sound like some far-fetched screenplay from a soap opera on Telemundo. For you to come through what you did, to come so far, is quite literally a miracle.

Mom: You are my miracle.

I've heard you say before that I saved your life; in many ways, I believe you. But you also saved mine, and it wasn't when I was born. It has been every day since. You have prepared me, taught me, trained me for this world.

Sometimes I think I'm a bit overprepared. The two competing sides of myself -- my little pragmatist and my little spontaneous bomb -- in many ways, are also you. You, who were so badly hurt. You, who somehow figured out a way to keep going. You, who taught me to leap, even if it is scary.

And now, over the last two years, I have watched you. Watched you handle a crumbling world and slowly pick up the pieces. And here you are: In love for probably the first time in your life. I have never seen you so happy. Or so scared.

The balance in our relationship has shifted completely: I now watch you go out on dates, tremulous and anxious, and I hope for you to have a full heart, enjoy yourself, and come home safely. I now get the phone calls: You on the other end, wondering what he meant by this word, me: helping you decode a hidden meaning, or advising you to take him at his word.

It is a different world for me, Mom. It has been a difficult adjustment for me, and I know I haven't always been fair to you. I have been critical. I have been demanding. And for a while, I didn't know why.

But now I understand.

Mom, I'm scared to lose you. I'm scared that this person will take you away -- you, the one warrior I have always had. You, the only constant in my world. I am no longer your focus in life, and that is so fucking scary. Yes, it is selfish. Yes, I am an adult, and I don't technically need you to care for me.

But I do, Mom. I need you.

I'm so torn between wanting you to be happy and enjoy the hell out of your new romance, and wanting you to be involved in my life. I'm confident that it will even out, eventually, but right now it is off kilter, and I'm spinning wonky.

I'm also so extremely proud of you. After all you have been through, you still manage to allow your heart to reach out, to still risk being hurt for the chance of being loved. And I admire that more than you can know. So I want this for you. I want it for you so much. I want to watch you walk for the first time, as though you are now my child. I want to be there for you when you fall so I can brush the dirt from your knees. I want to be there to send you off to your first day of school. I want to hold your hand when you cry, and I want to laugh with you when you are happy. But this is the hardest part: the letting go.

Mom, I love you. And I am letting you go.

Leap!

My Mother, My Friend

My mom and I had what I would call your average mother/daughter relationship when I was growing up. We never had the screaming and slamming doors fights that I occasionally witnessed between some of my friends and their mothers nor did we have the close "sit down with a cup of tea and chat" mother-daughter bond that I knew could exist. We had our disagreements but they were typically short-lived. For the most part we got along although I rarely shared with her when it came to boys, peer pressure, sex and the like. It wasn't that she was oblivious to my teenage world, it was more that she let my sister and me be independent but if we screwed up (and we certainly did) then she got involved. I sometimes wanted to tell her about my crush on a certain boy or the fight I had with a girlfriend but mostly she wanted to hear about my schoolwork or my dance classes so the rest I divulged to my older sister who I relied on heavily to commiserate with over teenage girl things. The one time that I can recall discussing my personal life with mom was senior year of high school when I was spending a lot of time alone, as it seemed my friends had decided to exclude me for some unknown reason. She wanted to know why I was sitting at home on Friday night, why I didn't call Aimee or Jen or Kristin so I filled her in. Her response, stated in a much more "momly" way of course, was basically "fuck 'em". It was probably the first time I felt that she understood my life.

We could only take each other in small doses, putting some distance between my mom and me from time to time was essential. Once I went away to college, we seemed to enjoy our time together more but by the end of a weekend visit we would start snapping at each other and I knew it was time to be on my way. I realize now that it was probably because we were much more similar than I was willing to admit. I knew I could never move back in with my parents after college the way my sister did to save money and pay off bills. Instead, my sister and I got an apartment together and I immediately started making plans to move to New York. I knew I would miss my family when I moved but I figured it wouldn't affect my mom any differently than when I left for college. There was no resistance from her when I announced my move, no "my baby is leaving" sentiment. The move itself went smoothly, save for a massive thunderstorm that rolled in while we were unloading the U-Haul, but as my parents climbed in their car to make the drive back to Pennsylvania my mom looked at me and simply said "I'm really gonna miss you." It was the first time she had ever said anything so poignant and the tears rolled down my face as I watched them drive away.

That was a changing day in my relationship with my mom and I looked forward to the visits she made, day trips either with my dad for sightseeing or with my sister so she could take us shopping. I was slowly seeing her has more than just my mother who would get angry when I got a B- in algebra II or left my shoes on the steps instead of taking them to my room. I saw that we could get along, maybe not in the same way as other mothers and daughters, but we definitely could. So when I decided to take a surf trip to Mexico for my 28th birthday I invited her to come with me. And she accepted. Just me and mom, and we had so much fun. Everyone in the surf group thought she was adorable and told me over and over how great she was. And I agreed. Sure, she drove me nuts a few times (whose mother doesn't?) but those instances paled in comparison to the surfing, horseback riding and margarita drinking. She told me again and again how impressed she was by my surfing ability and I could tell that she really meant it. But no one was more impressed than me. I was impressed that this woman, at 57 years old, hopped on a surfboard with no hesitation, did early morning yoga every day and giggled over the cute guy with the puppy that I befriended one evening. I was impressed that we finally had become friends.

(My mom, surfing Sayulita, Mexico, January 2005)