Mama Said There'll Be Days Like This, There'll be Days LIke This, My Mama Said

This is my mom, my oldest sister, and my mom's amazingly drawn-in eyebrows, when we lived in Scottsdale in the late 1960's.

 Well, Valentine's Day would have been my mom's 90th birthday. I can't imagine what she would have looked like as an old woman. She died when she was 43, and I was 10. Her death when I was so young, and everything that came after it, was probably the worst thing that's ever happened to me. I always say, I was lucky to have her even just for those ten years. Here are some of the wisdom that I carry with me all of these years later:

I was a mama's girl. Clearly. I was a pain in the ass, overly sensitive, hyper spaz, and my mom was so patient and sweet to me. She would say things like, "Here. Let me do it. That way if it's not done right, I won't have anyone to blame but myself." It had never occurred to me that my mom could make mistakes before she said that. I had never met an adult who admitted that they were fallible before. I just thought I was the only one who messed everything up. 

She also made sense of unrequited love for me. I told her I was in love with Brian Chapman. He was sooo cute, and all of the other girls liked him too, but he didn't like me back. She told me that she used to love a boy in grade school and he didn't love her back. She said he was so cute when they were kids, but then she went to a grade school class reunion when she was older, and he was fat and bald and even worse, so booooorrrrring. and she was glad he hadn't liked her. She made it seem like Brian was doing me a favor by not liking me back.

When we lived in Arizona among many Mormons, one of my friends invited me to what they called Primary. It's when their family sits around and talks about their religion. We were Catholic, and they took every opportunity to let us know how bad that was, and to try and recruit us to Mormonism. I just wanted to hang out with my friends, so I said, "sure". I came home in tears that night and told my mom, "They said when we died, all the Catholics were going to this layer just above hell, like purgatory. We would be with Black people and Jewish people too," My mom told me that it sounded great. We'd be in good company.She could always turn things around for me against the negativity of the world.

There are many, many, days where I wish I could tell her something that made me feel bad, so she could turn it around for me. Now, I have to do it for myself. At least I was lucky to learn how to do it from a pro.