Of heat and memorials...

I've been sleeping and lying low today, even though it's sunny and 85 outside. Then I realized, Ooooohhh...today's the day my mom died. I often get weird around this time of year--the dissertation surely didn't help matters--and my anti-social behavior in the face of sunshine and friends offering drinks suddenly makes a hell of a lot more sense.

So, I've cleaned up my dissertation scraps and manhandled my enormous air conditioner into the window (god bless MA), and now I'd like to take a brief stroll down memory lane with me mum. I like to do this sometimes because I do worry that I'll forget the good things about her. I can't remember her voice that well, although I know I sound like her. I can remember her face, but largely from pictures. Many of these things will make no sense to people outside my immediate family, but that's not really the point, is it? Memorial Day is about respecting memories. So, on Memorial Eve, here's a list of 20 random things I remember about my mom, who died 14 years ago today.

1. When we'd come in from outside with dirty bare feet, she'd call us the Blackfoot Tribe
2. She was a hyperbolic describer of things. A neighbor's outlandish pool was "the Baths of Caracalla" (the most lavishly ornate baths in the Roman Empire), a room with few windows became "the black hole of Calcutta."
3. We had a little hand painted sign in our kitchen reading, "Peut-etre demain."
4. She forced our small town librarian to let me read whatever I wanted after I told her the lady said Hello God it's me Margaret was too mature for me.
5. She demanded that the school board let me be the first girl in our county to skip a grade.
6. She cried when she laughed too hard. (Mostly at films like Airplane! and National Lampoons European Vacation.)
7. Her old boss in Manhattan said she had the best legs in New York.
8. She was a fabulous, clever writer. She actually started a manuscript about her experiences living in the Deep South but it never went anywhere.
9. She fell in love with a Jewish boy before she met my father and tried to elope with him to Europe, only my grandmother (charming anti-Semite that she was) hid her passport.
10. She got quite good at painting but never pursued it. She helped found an arts society in our tiny town, which became the mother of all hen parties. I still remember the fabulousness that she brought out in those southern belles. Sophistication meets sugar. There were a lot of cocktail parties at our place, Baptists be damned.
11. She tried to teach me the twist when I was 16 or so but I was too mortified to let her.
12. She loved Breyer's Vanilla Fudge Twirl more than anything.
13. She wouldn't eat pasta because it "looked like worms," but she made it for us. She also made some mean mashed potatoes, particularly after she discovered that I would eat anything that was mixed into mashed potatoes. We had salad made with iceberg lettuce every night at dinner, which was served at the table with candles.
14. She drank Manhattans when she could get them, but made screwdrivers and bloody marys at home.
15. She did the "mom swim" when we were at the pool (every day in the summer) and never got her hair wet. She left the business of teaching me to swim to "professionals," even though she was a competitive swimmer and diver. Her favorite activity was having me push her around the pool in her floating lounger.
16. She was the worst. driving. teacher. ever. and drove like a bat out of hell.
17. She and my little brother used to make up names for me when I was being a particularly evil teenager. The one that stuck was "Miss Cheerful Blender." I still have no idea what that means.
18. She used to get into fights with the religious people in our southern town (who often called her a "Papist" in addition to "yankee") when they argued that any unbaptised person was destined for hellfire. She loved to use the example of "the very nice young man who lives on a desert island and never hurts a soul."
19. Yet, when I accidentally got confirmed into the Methodist church (I went to Sunday School there with my peeps) and came home with a little wooden cross, her first response was, "That's it! Now we're both going to hell. Good grief!"
20. Other classic mom-isms: "Cynicism is the easy path," "Anything nutritious anytime" (for which I blame the Smoothie Cataclysm of 2000), "Run the water -- no one wants to be regaled with the sound of someone peeing," "This? This is a beer. Try it, you'll like it!" (Clever girl--it was a Coors, and tasting it guaranteed that I wouldn't touch the stuff until a kegger at Woof U), and other excellent moments like, "well if that isn't mutton dressed as lamb, I don't know what is," "Holy cow is that shag carpet?", "They're obviously jealous, Megarita. You're much smartier and prettier than they are," "Never say 'frat' or 'limo.' It sounds like you have no class!" and "Catfish are ugly. I don't want to eat something unattractive."

So here's to ma mere--I hope she's sitting pretty somewhere at the table with the beautiful people eating attractive fish and drinking stunning cocktails.