You are here with me

Last Mother's Day, my first sans Mother, was a motherfucker. Bad.

This year, fast approaching my second Motherless Mother's Day, not so much. I don't feel the same pain. Or hurt. It's there of course, whenever I think about my Mom, and what I consider her untimely death. But this year, my thoughts of her through that filter of anger and pain, quickly segue into something else, and that something else the past three weeks has been shoes. Really. Shoes.

You see Dear Reader, it took me a long time to learn how to tie my shoes. So long, that Mom and Dad joked that I was developmentally delayed. Only they didn't say that in the Oklahoma of my youth.

They said retarded. Seriously. My parents made retard jokes about me, their only son. Nice.

That might, depending on how politically correct you are, seem funny. But consider this. They didn't make shoes with velcro straps in place of shoe laces back in my day. You either had shoes with laces or slip on shoes. Thus, if couldn't tie your shoes, you were pretty much double screwed. You could admit that you were a dipshit who needed Mommy to tie your shoes, and suffer the ridicule of your friends. Or. You could wear slip on shoes and replace the scorn of being unable to tie your shoes, to that of a dork who wore goofy ass slip on shoes. Or. Dirty hippy sandal type shoes. Oh, how I miss Oklahoma, circa the early 1970s.

That is why I think Mom and Dad's humor, the retard joke amongst themselves, I overheard, were nothing more than them masking their fear and concern about my not being able to learn how to tie my shoes. I think most of us, joke about the things that bother us. You can either laugh or you can cry.

Eventually Dad figured out the problem. It wasn't so much me, as it was the way in which there were trying to teach me. My parents are right handed. I'm left. They had been trying to teach me how to tie my shoes with the emphasis of the right hand. That was something my young brain and questionable motor skills simply could not mimic. After Dad realized their error, he showed me how to tie my shoes with the emphasis on my dominant hand, the left. I nailed it the first time.

That happened on Mother's Day weekend.

On Mother's Day we played golf as a family at Sand Springs Golf Course. Number 11. This memory is why I can recall all of the above so well. We were near the green, with the Tulsa skyline as our backdrop. Blue sky. It was a chamber of commerce type beautiful late spring day in Oklahoma.

At some point, for reasons I can't recall, Mom told me that the best Mother's Day present I ever gave her, or could give her, was learning how to tie my shoes.

Then she laughed. Cackled really. She was laughing at herself. At Dad. At me. At the whole silly situation and drama that we'd been through over me learning to tie my shoes. She was 32 or 33 years old at that point in our story.

So, again, as I approach Mother's Day this year, it is not with the same motherfucker feeling of last. A better description would be how amputees describe the phantom limb phenomenon.

I'll hear a mention of Mother's Day. Usually in an ad. An ad that is trying to whip us all into a shopping frenzy to find that perfect gift that honors our Moms. Then, for the briefest of moments, I'll get sucked into it. I'll think, fuck me, I better get off my country ass and figure out what I should get Mom for Mother's Day. What $XX or under gift will personify everything that Mom means to me.

Then, in a flash, I'll remember, she's dead. I don't have to worry about buying a $4 card. Or flowers. Or worry whether or not we should try and carve out a few days so we can visit her. Or where we should eat dinner. Those options, or choices for me are gone. Like my Mom.

It's funny, in a very sick sort of a way, that one benefit of Mom's death is my being able to say fuck Hallmark. I've never been a fan of Hallmark created holidays. I don't think Mother's Day should be about retail relief for businesses.

But there lies the rub. You see, I only get that, because my Mom died. I got sucked into it before, and I'd be first in line to buy a $25 card if I could get her back.

Alas, I can't.

Which is why I end up thinking about shoes. I can't even begin to tell you what kind of shoes they were. What brand. The shoes are just stuff. And stuff goes away. Your body included. What's left, for the living, are the memories.

Until I BLOG again...You have been here and you are everything.