The Obligatory Mother's Day Tribute or, alternate title, This May Explain a Few Things

Back in January, when I felt confident and secure in my position at the newspaper HAHAHAHA WHAT AN IDIOT! I told my mom that come Mother's Day, I wanted to take her for a spa weekend somewhere. Well, here it is, Mother's Day and we're not at a spa. We are in Vicksburg. We are in Vicksburg too poor to do anything but go to a movie and drink the leftover wine from the Bitch & Wine session I had with some other CA casualties on Friday. But we're together and only one of us has cried - so far. The day is young. 

At any rate, since I can't buy her spa days and send her on cruises and whatnot, I've decided to do the next best thing: embarrass her on the interwebs. I'm going to tell all 7 to 12 people who are actually reading this about my favorite Mom memory. It's the one that always comes to mind when I think about her when I was a kid and I don't know that I've ever even told her.

This is the woman who took me to my first concert (Elvis FTW!). And my second (Peter Frampton WTF?). This is the woman who schlepped me back and forth to gymnastics practice 4 times a week for years. This is the woman who drove me to Baton Rouge to go to homecoming with a boy I met over the summer in Monroe. This is the woman who called the mean girl and told her to back off when I couldn't bring myself to leave the house because of the awful things mean girl said and did to me in high school. She put up with some (expletive deleted - Mother's Day bonus gift) because I was an awful AWFUL teenager and young adult. And too often a pretty awful older adult, come to think of it. She's been put through the wringer by us kids and life in general and I wanted to do better by her as an adult proper. 

So here it is, my favorite Mom memory - but also quite possibly something I might have dreamed. There are two people who can confirm this: my best good childhood friend Susie and Mom. We'll see what they say.

I believe it was summer and I must have been in the 8-11 age range. Summer in Monroe was hot and long. We made our own fun - forts, fishing, kickball, bicycling, staging plays, board games, eating queso at Susie's house because she had this cool new "microwave" machine - and would go from house to house from morning to dark. Amazing, I know! We were free-range before it was a thing. 

As I recall, Susie and I were hanging around the house, probably pestering Mom for some sort of entertainment but she shoo'd us out. After playing outside in that thick Louisiana summer heat, we went in for something to drink and it was then that mom skulked out of her bedroom with what looked like blood dripping from her mouth.

I think we screamed. She started chasing us and saying things like "I vant to drink your bloooood." And we ran. Terrified that my mother was going to exsanguinate us. (Possibly why I like that word so much today? Discuss.) I remember Susie and I in the backyard looking at each other with WTF thought bubbles hanging over us. My mother was a vampire. Or possibly had lost her damn mind. Mom didn't keep the act up long. I think she might have just cleaned the bright red lipstick off and then acted like nothing at all had happened. But we were traumatized and for that I say THANKS, MA!

OK. I was not traumatized. Instead I have that very vivid memory and now, as an adult, the ability to look back and say: WT actual F was she thinking?! Pull a stunt like that today and someone from child protective services would be asking me where on the doll I was touched. (In the head GAH! c'mon smdh. You know you're thinking I'm a bit tetched in the ol' bean.) She was taking care of house and home and being a grown up, but she was probably at the time just a few years older than my daughter is now. She was a practically a child! A very young woman trying to make the most of living in a small town with a gaggle of needy kids and there she was with no internet service. Oh, wait. Lemme try again. There she was with no internet. Or cable. Or a car to go to the mall or water park or mommy's day out or play dates or HOLD THE PHONE! work. She was a mommy in the 70s,  but without the Tab and cigarettes, and I consider that fact with a mixture of envy and sadness. 

So, before I go off into some melancholy direction I will stop and just say: Thank you, Mom. Thank you for being bizarre and sweet and always ALWAYS present. I love you. Happy Mother's Day.