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March 12, 2006

the seventeen year war: mom

I've resisted writing about my mom in this space. I resist for what seems to me a pretty good reason: I'm writing about her in another medium. It pains me, though, to pass up the rich source of anecdotes that was our relationship. Today, I yield. Today I'm reminded of Mom, as I am every spring, by the buds appearing on the trees in my yard.

It was the 70s, and Mom was an aspiring you-name-it. Disco, wine with metal screw-on caps, vitamin everything, turquoise everything, bellbottoms, divorce, cheap-sex-as-feminism, priest-diddling—if it was a fad in the 70s, she was practicing it. (Hmm? You don't remember the priest-diddling craze? You must have been blind. I remember it being all the rage.) One of Mom's incarnations—I'm not sure if it was the old hippie or the master gardener—dragged me outside every spring to show me the buds forming on the trees. Maybe that's daft; maybe it's not. But Mom didn't stop there. She had a whole dramatic circle of life speech. "From the Dawn of Time," she'd say in title caps, waving her hand theatrically with one hand while restraining a miserable, wriggling me by the shirt collar, "Nature has renewed itself e'ry spring. This renewal marks the time. It herewith marks our lives, and those of they who came before, and those of who will follow. We all come and go, but we are part of nature, and nature is eternal. Lo, gaze upon these pink buds, Johnny."

And then she made some profound point. I forget what.

We were an odd pairing, Mom and me. When your mother is an impetuous trend-hopper, you rebel by being overly serious, disapproving. I downright clucked. "You were born 40, John. I swear to God, " she scolded me more than once, before born-again Christianity briefly swept through her circle and she abruptly stopped using the expression. I never thought of being born 40 as an insult, particularly, at least not until I started hurtling through my 30s at uncontrollable speeds. Born 40. Yow. That makes me, like, Percy's age now.

Hurtful, hurtful woman.

posted by john at 6:02 PM  â€¢  permalink