A Bullet Point List Regarding My Mother
May 8, 2011
Dear Church Avenue Chomp reader:
Happy mother’s day. I got my first macaroni necklace this year, and couldn’t be happier, though Henry occasionally insists that the macaroni necklace is in fact his.
But never mind all that: for today let’s look up, and not down.
These are some notable aspects of my mom that you should know about:
- Her splendid vocabulary
- Her imaginative mind
- Her analytical mind
- Her possibly misdirected love of algebra, which she believes is genetic and inherited from her uncle
- Her ability to pack the hell out of any car or suitcase, putting in at least 5x as much stuff as actually fits, and doing so with ease, so long as you get out of her way, this may or may not be algebra related
- The fact that she has an MBA, which seems so incongruous as to be somewhat of a “fun fact,” and yet makes perfect sense
- Her strong opinions
- Her great palette — complexion, eyes and hair, which extends to her dress
- Her drive and energy to work really, really hard
- Her sense of priority
- Her laserlike rage if you hurt or wrong one of her loved ones
- Her love for animals (the more time it’s spent in a parking lot wandering around not getting what it needs, the more she likes it)
- Her freakish ability to get stains and wrinkles out of anything that is stained or wrinkled, an ability that I always assumed was maternal, but has certainly not yet blossomed for me
This is a brief list put together when I am sleepy. These things don’t define my mom, but they do warrant notice, comment, and admiration.
I welcome you to — no, in fact I demand that you — use the comments to share a list or at least a snippet of what you most love (or miss) about your own mother.
7 Comments
leave one →
Church Avenue Chomp 
There are people who, faced with a dilemma, ask themselves, “What would Trisha do?”
Thank you, Michelle. Love you very much.
Your mom, Trisha
1. Her energy
2. Her ability to make even the worst boo-boo, be it physical or emotional, better
3.Her willingness to play kitchen with her 2 yo granddaughter long after everyone else has tired of it, including eating upteen bowls of “soup.”
4. Her aesthetic sense-in house decorating, gardening and clothing style
5. Her practicality
6. Her generosity
7. Her strong sense of what is important in this life
8. The fact that she has read just about every mystery ever written
9. Her outstanding singing voice
10. The way she makes me feel like everything will be ok, even when it definitely feels like it will not.
This also not an exclusive list but her granddaughter just woke up from a nap so I know she will understand!
Aye, aye. I’d second all of that and add: her excellent sense of anticipating and accommodating everyone’s needs; her funny stories about herself and her family and how she laughs at them; and her ability to pick up and develop many new interests along the way: bike riding and architecture in particular.
love and miss:
1. her keen ability to make up a “nickname” for any animal, vegetable, mineral, or action on the planet. I may have inherited this ability. if not, it has definitely skipped a generation to my oldest daughter.
2. her undying, unwavering belief in the power and perfectness of me.
3. her love of maine, and all things related to this one-syllable state.
4. like Mrs. P, her love of all animals–the worse shape they were in, the better. cue the electrocuted baby blue jay lying in a bush, rescued, then nestled in a kleenex-lined bowl, being fed with an eyedropper.
A few things:
1) Her singing voice and self-accompanied guitar
2) The way she turned down the covers for me
3) Her schlepping around the city with too many bags on public buses and with shopping carts
4) Her freckles
5) Her chicken salad and bran muffins
6) The story about playing “prairie” with her best friend in an abandoned lot of overgrown grass in South Chicago
7) Sayings like “everyone has their own little red wagon”
Thanks for giving me a good reason (as opposed to a bad, work-related one) to cry at the office on a very frustrating day….
1. The way she danced to my music when she intruded upon my bedroom when I was a teenager. It elicited an eyeroll, but it’s one of the things I remember best about her. I think she actually secretly liked the Grateful Dead- she wasn’t pretending.
2. She worked literally her whole adult life until she got sick and could always put a delicious, home-cooked meal on the table, for any dietary restriction.
3. She could play pool. I will never be able to emulate her in this particular way. She was badass. Probably left over from an adolescence that it’s best I don’t know too much about.
4. She told me to come home when I was in Tokyo, underpaid, miserable, and ruining my love life in the process. It was the best decision I ever made, and she was the only one who could tell me it was ok to choose love over a career.
5. Her ability to be nice and get everyone/thing back on track no matter how mad she really was/how off-the-hook the situation- I think it’s called leadership. I guess me and my brother being the only ones who could crack that façade is the true measure of how much she loved us.
Plus, we were pretty awful kids sometimes. But! We loved her very much, and still do.