Reasons I Love My Mother

Reason #128:

The way she played Werewolves.

Werewolves is this game I learned in college about six years ago and the proceeded to teach everyone I know: my family, other college friends, family friends, UCB people in New York, etc. It’s a game that involves lying and persuasion, and most of all, keeping a straight face.

My mom was a HILARIOUS werewolf. If someone accused her of being a werewolf, and she was, she would smile tightly for a second, then burst out laughing, then practically admit her guilt, then pull herself together and say, “But seriously, I’m not. Seriously.”

Eventually, even when she wasn’t a werewolf, she would still laugh guiltily if accused. It was always her reaction in the game, to just laugh.

Reason #127:

She knew how to decorate a home for Christmas.

She would spend a day unloading trunks full of Christmas decorations, and when she was done, the whole house was just wonderful. It looked right, smelled right, everything.

I thought of this last night; I was walking around this really beautiful neighborhood in Paris, and all of the Christmas lights were up and there were these little kids on this carousel that was all lit up in the middle of this beautiful park, and it was about the most perfect sight you could imagine. I started to get jealous until I remembered that I had that as a kid, too: those really nice, quaint, growing-up memories of Christmas time.

So thanks, mom.

Reason #126:

I loved hearing stories about my mom when she was younger.

My mom and dad used to joke about how it was love at second sight because they first met as servers at Baker’s Square in Victorville. The first time my dad saw my mom, she was bent over in brown polyester pants stocking condiments. So…hence the second sight part.

A year or two later, if you’ll recall, he proposed to her at Medieval Times.

Reason #125:

Because of the night she asked us to drive her to church so she could watch her choir practice.

She had lost most of her voice and couldn’t sing anymore, and I know she was self-conscious, so I thought it was very brave and wonderful that she still wanted to go and see them while they sang.

And it was nice to sit with her while she did.

Reason #124:

On her 40th birthday, she went to Minnesota with her three best friends to show them where she grew up. They didn’t go to church the Sunday they were there, even though our family NEVER missed church, but my mom made a point of filming her and her three friends talking at length about this fake mass they never went to and how great it was in an attempt to fool my dad into thinking they had gone.

My mom’s laughing the whole time.

Reason #123:

I went to Notre Dame today in Paris and while I was there I lit one of those candles and thought about my mom. 

I don’t necessarily believe in everything Christianity or Catholicism has to say, but I love the history of it and I have good memories of my mom and dad taking us out to this beautiful retreat center every Easter to do the Stations of the Cross. I went back to that retreat center with my dad and sisters a few weeks before she passed, and I was appreciative that she would bring us there as kids. It was very beautiful and calming.

She would have really liked that tour of Notre Dame today.

Reason #122:

She always said she could never be on a jury because she would walk in assuming guilt.

The one time she did get called for jury duty, she called me every day with illegal updates that ended with “that idiot’s guilty”.

Reason #121:

When my dad wanted to get the Lord’s prayer tattooed backwards on his chest so that when he got ready in the morning he could read it in the mirror, she said “Joseph, no. No.”

Reason #120:

She would always send me a surprise, random thing in the mail, but then call me and tell me, “You might be getting a surprise in the mail!”.

But she also always wrote down my address wrong, so it would take so long for my package to arrive that it would actually end up being a surprise again.

She knew what she was doing.

Reason #119:

I wrote a video for The Onion making fun of slutty reality show girls that hasn’t come out yet, but I wrote it more than a year ago.

After that, whenever I started to talk to my mom about anything I was writing, for The Onion or not, she would say “Wait, wait, it’s not about sluts, is it?”.

Reason #118:

I spent my summers in Minnesota as a kid, working at my grandparents’ restaurant, and one summer, I brought my mom back a gift. It was a giant, floral, non-Christmas wreath that I envisioned her being able to hang in any number of places in her home. I think she mentioned something about one once, so I bought her one. It was gigantic, and in retrospect, very, very ugly. And also just a weird gift to get from your eleven year old son.

But she put it up. She kept it up in our kitchen for maybe a couple of years. It was only a few months after I bought it that I realized it was a ridiculous gift and she was only keeping it up to make me feel good. I can’t remember when she finally took it down, but it was probably once she thought it could be done discreetly enough for me not to notice.

Well, mom, I noticed. But I also noticed how long you kept it up. Eleven year old me thanks you. Twenty six year old me apologizes.

Reason #117:

When we were little and I went to the same school she taught at, class would begin at 7:45am. I have vivid memories of some mornings when we would leave our house at 7:40am, park as quickly as we could, and then run to class together.

Reason #116:

Because she made such an impression that a little girl who never even had my mom for a teacher still felt compelled to do her “Taking A Stand” Project about her fighting cancer. Where she was born and on what day are a little off, but I think this is really, really sweet.

Reason #115:

She came to terms with and found a sort of peace with dying.

It was awful and sad and she didn’t want to leave us, but she found a kind of okayness with passing after the years of fighting and sickness and trying to get better that really helped me.

I’ve heard that many people go out kicking and screaming, terrified and angry and never accepting their lot, but not her. She was able to express to all of us many times that she trusted that she had done her job and that things would be alright.

It made a huge, huge difference.

Reason #114:

I just found out from my sister that my mom’s favorite hip hop/R&B song was R. Kelly’s “Ignition” because she liked the chorus, where he sang “So baby gimme that toot toot/And lemme give you that beep beep”.