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My mother, a sly child: legs crossed to conceal
dungarees for an offical school photo in West Virginia.
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"She's crazy, Kathy. She talks to herself. That's probably why I'm so tired." Devin, my 22-year-old college senior sister, told me this a few days ago over the phone while she was home on a break. She sounded weary beyond her years. (She is weary beyond her years, but that's another talk show.)
Anyway, we'd finished one of those triangular conversations wherein I call to speak to my sister, and my mother, somewhere in the background (probably on the couch and probably clutching the remote), relays information to me via her.
And even though I can hear my mother loudly and clearly ("Tell her I said ...," "Tell her the family reunion is ...," "Tell her to bring me some money!"), my dutiful sister repeats everything verbatim so the words end up sounding like they're on a delay.
Of course, this is the part where I dispel the notion that my mother is, as my sister said, "crazy."
As much as I'd like to do that, I cannot. My mother is crazy.
And not in the institutionalized, psychoanalyzed sense. She's, how shall we say it? Well, she's eccentric.
Old enough to be retired, she coordinates a reading program that pairs senior citizens as tutors to elementary school children in Hamilton. And although she and her colleagues are the same age, she jokes about "old people" and the need to keep active.
She doesn't bunjee jump, skydive or juggle chainsaws. She survives.
Her humor is ribald and has ultimately evolved into full armor against life's low balls that have included two marriages, four children, four stepchildren, homelessness, the death of both parents and two siblings and a late-in-life baby, among other curves.
She hasn't always been so loose and comfortable in her skin. She's always been cool, by street decree, but I think she took herself and her purpose much too seriously before.
Of course, the aforementioned biographical signposts might seem trifling when you consider that everyone comes up against something in life. But I've seen lesser women accomplish far less than her.
See, that's the thing about my mom: She's this black Energizer Bunny. She just keeps going and going and going, and she does so with guffawing grace.
Laughter to her is a guttural, spiritual salve, glue that keeps her together when bills, disappointment, depression and loneliness might otherwise cause her to crack through to her foundation.
My mom is a stand-up comedienne in the spirit of Moms Mabley or Don Rickles -- acerbic, honest and uproarious. Just like my late grandmother, Mary Hill, she's perfected the art of the reenactment: hand and leg gestures, rubbery facial expressions and dead-on voices. No one is exempt. Sisters, brothers, offspring -- we all have been mocked, snickered at and imitated. She's not hateful or mean-spirited, and she laughs at herself as much as she laughs at others, her children and grandchildren included.
When my young nephews come to her house with junk food and videocassettes in tow, she doesn't feign interest at the prospect of seeing The Lion King, Pokémon or Bugs Bunny and Roadrunner for the umpteenth time.
They yell, "Mom G! We've got videos!" "Oh, God," is her response. She's a crunchy curmudgeon to their delight.
When Kenny, my middle brother and king of all things material, calls her disguising his voice as a bill collector or televangelist soliciting prayer, she calls me to tell me he "doesn't have any friends so he has to call and bug me."
I'm known in certain camps for my boisterous nature. (OK, I'm loud and only sometimes funny.) So, too, are my brothers. My sister is also a laugh riot. We came by it all honestly.
My mother used to search for her driver's license in the pages of a tattered, portable bible whenever she'd get pulled over for speeding by the cops.
When we were younger, she sported a beach-ball sized red Afro à la Angela Davis, mid-driffs, bell-bottom jeans and chukka boots. She was equally well-known around Butler County for how well she played Gospel as she was for her cooking and how little crap she took from people. She was a rabble-rouser who kept them in stitches.
Growing up under the shade of my mother's shadow was like sitting at Pam Grier's boot heels. She's a bad mutha ... shutchomouth.
I guess all I'm really trying to say is that, like most women I have ever known, my mother has evolved. She's been down but never out. My mom is the heavyweight not-quite-has-been with the face like ground beef who won't take the standing eight count.
She has been driven to the brink but never jumped over.
These days, my mother and I spend as much time making each other laugh about seemingly small things as we do talking about serious life issues, and that's because all her real work as a mother is finished.
She's given us the virtues, the character, the values and the sensitivity. Most importantly, she's bestowed upon us the gift of laughter and the sense to know when it's time to laugh.
And that's most of the time. ©
