Why Wait Forty Years?
Atlanta, GA
May 13, 2018
“Oh no! You don’t like him either!”
– My mother, to my father, on seeing his initial reaction to the birth of his first son
OK…perhaps mushy sentimentality is not my mother’s thing.
Then again, that my first impression evoked a 10 lb rhino, with a head the size of Wyoming and a face resembling Louis Armstrong’s voice, would have induced a grudge from all but the most saintly (or delusional) of new mothers.
If my mother was in fact not particularly fond of her newborn, she from that moment to this has done a marvelous job disguising her distaste.
No one could possibly have imparted so much to one of whom she thought so little.
Apart from enabling me to become a self-sufficient man with an unsurpassed family, she was my indispensable guide to what became my love for reading, my propensity for writing (yes, you can blame her – but also indict the inspiration of her own ability, which she has in abundance), my desire to learn, my eagerness to travel, and my appreciation for the fine and the sublime in life.
Not least, her marriage to Jerry Miller provided immeasurable benefit to my development as a child and my aptitude as a father.
But…she wasn’t perfect.
There was the occasion when as an infant she left me in the capable “care” of her teenage younger brother…and by the end of the night I was the idolic centerpiece on the high altar of the Key Club.
Or the times I called plaintively from the Tampa airport, or in the rain from Jesuit High School, to remind that I was waiting to be picked up.
But she consistently picked me up in other ways…
When I split a knee just before my tenth Christmas and was told I must spend that day in the hospital, she immediately rejected the notion as if it were a middle seat to Mogadishu.
She insisted the doctor teach her how to clean and dress the bone-deep wound, which he did, and she did…over the course of a couple days that no doubt elicited wistful longings for the Horn of Africa.
On other Christmases, to dissuade us from ransacking the presents bearing our names, she created cryptographic label codes to disguise which gift was mine and which Brett’s.
Other years her cipher was deviously simple.
She put our actual names on the gifts…then, just prior to opening them, had us swap the labeled presents we had for weeks so diligently attempted to guess.
As boys always out and about, most of our health issues were, like my injured knee, of the self-inflicted sort.
Among my teenage health issues that were not self-inflicted were a couple that, as it happened, were not really issues at all.
By age 16, the erstwhile infant behemoth had grown so skinny that he had to run around in the shower to get wet.
Although my mother is typically the sort who reminds that the sun exists even when only clouds are visible, she was certain my metabolic inability to retain the weight of however many cheeseburgers and cheesecakes I cared to eat was the clarion for me to receive Last Rites.
After several visits to my doctor came the dreaded diagnosis…and the daunting prescription.
“He’s fine.”
“So…what should I do?”
“Nothing. Be grateful – we should all be so sick.”
A couple years later, arriving in Atlanta to begin my freshman year at Georgia Tech, I made a brief visit to Crawford Long hospital to have a couple lymph nodes removed.
I think the doctor told my mother something like:
“This is very routine…no big deal. Nothing to worry about”.
What my mother heard was more like:
“Sure, it might be nothing…but is probably cancer.”
Prior to my surgery, she gave no hint of the anxiety she was enduring, but I do recall us sharing a very happy dinner celebration after confirming the absence of lymphoma (seems as good a reason as any to celebrate).
Of course, we have had many other happy dinners.
Some were so happy that they devolved into fits of hysterical laughter.
One night, dining al fresco in London, the mere mention of chocolate covered ants (don’t ask: you had to be there) somehow drew from my mother laughter more uncontrolled and unrelenting than Donald Trump’s Tweets.
Imagine the look on the face of the Sommelier at Arpège in Paris if he were suddenly informed that the house wine would henceforth be a 2017 “Two Buck Chuck”.
That was the expression we received from the stiff-upper-lipped Londoners by whom we were surrounded…as Brett, Jerry, and I sheepishly shrugged in the knowingly apologetic manner of a White House spokesman trying to explain something George Bush (either of them) had just said.
My mother was with me not only when I initially moved to Atlanta, but when I relocated from there to Sacramento, and again a few years later when I transferred to Philadelphia.
In the elevator of the Sacramento Hyatt, it was she who pointed out (by “whispering” and nudging: “HEY, THAT’S STEVEN TYLER OF AEROSMITH!”) that the person riding up with us was Steven Tyler of Aerosmith.
In Philadelphia, a friend suggested to her that we dine one night in a place of which the exterior evoked the Stones at Altamont, and the interior a reflexive compulsion to post bail.
To reach the actual restaurant, which was indeed quite good, required breaststroking thru the thick Marlboro smoke and Michelob scent of a sleeve-optional, tattoo mandatory dive-bar-pool-hall in which everyone resembled Steven Tyler of Aerosmith.
Scenes from “Easy Rider” are not, however, the only places to which my mother and I have had the pleasure of traveling.
She took me to Montréal for my 15th birthday, brought us skiing on several occasions at multiple resorts, and cruised a variety of itineraries aboard ships that were quite elegant – despite a few passengers on one vessel finding accommodations to be “not so hotsy-totsy”.
The British Open will be played this year at Carnoustie. My mother and I were in attendance in 2007, the last time that course hosted the Open.
She arrived first, waving to me with her left hand (her right clutched the first in a procession of complimentary champagne) from the 18th fairway hospitality suite that served as our base camp for the weekend.
If Carnoustie was our camp, Gleneagles was our tent, separated by a mere twenty minute chopper ride that carried us each day over St Andrews and a smattering of castles that dot the countryside of southeastern Scotland.
Now that was hotsy-totsy…and I don’t recall seeing anyone who resembled Steven Tyler of Aerosmith.
Among the many great things my mother taught me is (this note notwithstanding) the value of discretion.
I recall when I was in college I was tempted to confess my feelings to a girl for whom I had fallen after having been good friends for quite a while, but who I sensed had not undergone the same conversion.
Who knows? Maybe she shared my feelings, but would realize it only after I divulged mine to her (because that always works).
I sought my mother’s opinion.
We spoke by phone, which meant I could not see her cringing. She was, shall we say…skeptical.
Her advice: be patient. Give it time…like maybe forever.
“You always have the option of saying something later. Once you say it, however, it cannot be unsaid.”
It was wise counsel. I thanked my mother for her sage advice, and hung up the phone.
I immediately picked it back up, told the girl how I felt…and never saw her again.
A few years later, another very special girl entered the picture.
This time, my mother told me not to let that particular gem slip away. Having learned my lesson, I did as I was told.
I married Rita the next year.
Not everything, therefore, should remain unsaid (this note is, again, the exception that proves the rule).
A few weeks ago, my mother wrote that in forty or fifty years she hoped to be reflected upon with the same affection I bestowed on her father last month.
If able, I will certainly do so.
But such homage need not, and should not, be withheld till then.
Today – Mother’s Day – seems as good a day as any to let her know how much she has meant…and still means.
However, as noted earlier, my mother has an aversion to sappiness and an allergy to mush.
I will therefore squeeze the fruit of effusive praise to extract its essential oil: simply to convey my love and gratitude for everything she has done and meant.
And that she and all other mothers on this distribution enjoy a wonderful day that is abundantly hotsy-totsy.
JD
