Tag Archives: mothers

Please criticize me mercilessly and make me cry

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So that was a helluva eight months. Like everyone, I’m a little furrier, and just a touch more stressed.

But

I finally did it, I enrolled in a writing course. Well writing courses. But I’m a grown up. With children. And a job. So that means I complete them one at a time. Because that’s how you eat elephants- one at a time.

That’s definitely the saying.

So in lieu of actual posts, I’m going to post my assignments. Please enjoy them. Or not. But please grade them. And rip into them like you are my mother and my work is an errant, shrieking smoke alarm.

Introduction to Storytelling – Keep a journal

September 16, 2020

The battery in the smoke detector outside my bedroom died at precisely three forty-one am this morning. I wonder whether they program it that way, whether it’s China’s revenge on us for forcing them to produce all our goods.

 I can picture it -the two unfortunate workers sitting next to each other in the factory.

“Should I set it for two fifteen?”

“No, they’ll get a good night’s sleep after that, pick a later time.”

It made me remember when I was little and the smoke detector went off in the night. Instead of a sporadic beep, it was a long wail that pierced your eardrums and was so loud that you felt you could almost see sound.

 I walked out of my bedroom just in time to see my mother whacking the plastic safety device repeatedly with a broom. The smoke detector flew across the landing and onto the floor where my mother pounced on the battery compartment with the aggression of a hungry lion tearing into a gazelle, snuffing out the smoke detector’s life force as swiftly as a predator on the Discovery Channel.

I wish I had been that dramatic when my smoke detector went off. It makes for better childhood memories.

I merely reached up and removed it from its place on the ceiling. I didn’t even need a chair- a benefit of living in a house that was designed for oversized garden gnomes. Then I grabbed the kitchen step stool to reach the shelf with the batteries.

There were no nine volt batteries. Are there ever any nine volt batteries at three in the morning? Perhaps all the charged nine volt batteries gather together to party at that hour, licking one another for kicks. Who knows?

So then I had to make the decision of which smoke detector to move from its floor to replace the defunct one outside the bedrooms. Which begs the question- if I were a fire, where would I start?

The answer is of course – pants, hence the phrase ‘liar, liar pants on fire’. Ergo I swapped out the main floor one because there were pants in the basement hanging on the clothes horse to dry. Then I went and lay awake in bed for three hours and thought about how my children will only have boring stories to tell.

Your Mother Is So

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“Here have a look” Sula held up her Blackberry screen which was also a mirror so I could inspect the braid she had just put in my hair. “That’s useful” I commented on her dual purpose mirror/phone cover “Your mother?” I asked using our personal shorthand of “That item looks so useful that only your mother who possesses impeccable taste could have picked it out”. “No, me actually” Sula replied.

I was surprised. Almost everything beautiful and multi-purpose in Sula’s house and wardrobe was chosen by her mother. Her mom’s particular brand of style and elegance are at work in every aspect of Sula’s life and by virtue of being Sula’s close friend, some of Sula’s mother’s good taste spills into my life too. When she lived in my city, Sula’s house was beautifully decorated and artfully arranged, because of this, it was a hub of social activity; people wanted to be there. I remember helping Sula move in and watching her mother direct where to put the furniture to create the warmest atmosphere then heading out to choose drapes to accent the room.

Sula’s Mom prides herself on being a Mom; Sula’s parents live thirty seconds from my Dad’s house so when Sula and I lived in the same city, we would frequently carpool back and forth on weekends. My job once we got back home was to hold onto Maddie while Sula unloaded the endless bags of groceries and things her mother had sent back with her. The weeks afterward, on craft nights, Sula and I would feast on delicious delicacies. “Where did you get this?” I would ask, hungrily eyeing my forkful of salad covered in a layer of delectable bee pollen. “My mother” Sula would say.

Eventually I stopped asking about the origins of items and instead just commented when I borrowed Sula’s winter boots which made my feet warmer and more comfy than they’d ever been in the winter; “I love your mother’s taste”.

Even before Sula’s parents’ home became my go to place and the locale of many a drunken discussion with Sula, I felt I knew Sula’s mom, through her choices of upholstery, through Sula’s stories of her mother’s adventures with her sorority. I saw Sula’s mother’s commitment to her friends and family in Sula by the way she valued our friendship and how much time she devoted to her perfect little spaniel. From bee pollen to a perfectly designed, tailor-made purple dress which is so gorgeous that I beg Sula to wear it every time I see her, Sula’s life in filled with her mother’s charm and care.

Let’s have a cheer for loving women who enjoy nothing more than sharing the best of themselves with others that allow the joke “Your mother is so” to become a conversation piece; your mother is so stylish, your mother is so intelligent, your mother is so kind, your mother is so welcoming.

If you have such a lovely lady like Sula’s mom in your life, please leave a warm comment below because even in the midst of a difficult time, Sula’s mother is somehow finding the energy to help me.