My mom’s friend Alice was in town in Austin this past Saturday.  Alice is like the opposite of my mother: positive, open, warm and intelligent.  Her husband is a retired E9 USMC who has spent his whole life working aircraft maintenance on airplanes to make sure they are safe, with the Corps and then for the past 25 doing the same for Fed Ex’s planes.  They live in a small town outside of Memphis and do cool things in their spare time like ride Harley’s.  

My mother would rather die than get on a Harley.  She is pretty much just like Lucille Bluth from Arrested Development.  She even brought a cooler with vodka and Bloody Mary fixings the one time a few years ago when I had to go to the emergency room.  She got up at 4AM to hit the road from Dallas to Austin (I had called her at midnight in excruciating pain, I didn’t want to call her but she’s the only family member I really have to call on for the most part) but she still took the time to carefully pack a small cooler with Mr and Mrs T Mix plus sliced lime, Worchestchire sauce and olives.  The cooler was under my feet as she drove me to the hospital.  I was having stomach pains and had to lift my legs out of the way of the cooler.  “What’s this?” I managed to eeek out in between stomach cramps. “Oh you know hospitals, they take all day so I came prepared!” was my mother’s serious answer, as if this were normal.  

This past Saturday the three of us went to lunch and then thrifting then came home late afternoon to have some white wine at my breakfast table.  I have no idea how we got on this topic, but the subject came up about how my mother is a terrible mom.

This is actually not a secret.  It’s like a bad joke that my mom openly talks about like it is funny.  Since I was a kid she’s told me how she never wanted to be a mom and I always nodded my head in understanding even though I didn’t really understand.  Even as a small child I felt sorry for her.  My mother has really been more like a sister figure than a mother.  Back to the breakfast table:  

Mom: “You know I’d always try and lose Heather in department stores when she was little BUT (deep sigh) she would always find me! (my mom fondly recalling this memory as if it were something sentimental like opening Christmas gifts, her retelling it with a smile and laughter). “I mean I would walk to the other side of the friggin place and she would come hunt me down! I just couldn’t seem to shake her!” (Laughing, she’s the only one at the table laughing).

The topic moved from department stores to grocery stores:

Mom: “You know in the late 70s/early 80s they didn’t do as great of a job with those baby seats in shopping carts.  There wasn’t as many straps back then.  Well when Heather was 18 months I strapped her in one of those in the cart but then had to walk away for something a couple of aisles over.  I mean, I wasn’t going to be gone long! Anyway you know it would be just like Heather (she beams at me at this point in the story) to figure out how to undo the straps and start climbing out of the cart! A couple found her doing so and grabbed her and was coming to look for me right as I was returning.  And they yelled at me! I still can’t believe they yelled at me for that, it was none of their business,” my mother says, brow furred. This promoted my own memory from the Piggly Wiggly in the town we lived in with my Me Ma:

My mother purposely walked away like she always did when we were shopping but this time she walked far enough away I couldn’t find her.  I was little, around 4 years old.  I didn’t know what to do so I started to cry.  This woman in her 20s and her mom found me crying and took me to the front of the store to have the store page that there was a lost child.  The biggest part of my memory is standing at the front of the store with these 2 women while they paged for my mother over and over again.  She didn’t show up so the women took me by the hand and we walked the aisles trying to find her.

We found her in the back cooler section of the store, shopping list in hand, checking things off the list while reaching for yogurt.  The women were furious.  They asked her didn’t she notice her child was missing and didn’t she hear the paging? Mother calmly said no, she figured I would eventually find her.  

My mother laughed when I told Alice this story, us sitting around the table almost 34 years later from the incident.  “I don’t remember that one!” she said gleefully.  Everyone sipped their wine. Sunlight shone in through the blinds, birds chirping outside.  Alice, the entire time didn’t say one word, just sat there silently with wide eyes.