Voodoo Time Dot Com

I haven’t written here in a little while because I’ve been working on something to post for Mother’s Day. As I do every year, I went out looking for a card and found absolutely nothing that was heartfelt but not sickeningly so. The greeting card industry must be a government work program for failed poets. I wanted to send her something nice, but money is tight this year, so I figured I’ve got this great medium right here on my little interwebnetpagesite, so I’d try to put some text up for me mum.

Anyway, my mom amazes me. Ever since I became an ‘adult’ and had to start making my own way in the world, I have wondered how on earth she managed to keep us all above water. She and my father married rather young. I arrived within a year (I have a big head too, so I can’t imagine my birth was pleasant). My sister showed up about a year and a half after that. My parents were divorced when I was five and my mom was pregnant with my brother. Like the song said, “Papa was a rolling stone” – at least he fancied himself as much. Mom was left with two very small children and one more on the way, along with a small house in a questionable neighborhood, and a used Chevy station wagon – neither of which were paid off yet. Dad moved out, got away with a very small monthly child support payment, and only had to see us kids two days each month.

My mom never got to go to college, so we lived on a receptionist’s salary, but somehow she managed to keep us all clothed and fed. I don’t know how that happened, but I never once went to bed hungry. I didn’t even know we were hard up for money. We never had to worry about that. When you’re a kid, you’re completely wrapped up in your own needs. Things were alright for me, so I figured everything was cool. Only much later did I realize that mom must have gone without pretty often. For example, she almost never took a day off from work because she could cash out her unused vacation days at the end of the year for Christmas money. I don’t know what other kinds of things she sacrificed for us (besides a social life – no guy in his twenties makes regular plans with a mother of three), because she never let us know.

For all this, I admire my mother more than anyone I know. She always put us kids first, and I could never thank her enough for that. So happy Mother’s Day, mom! Thanks for everything. I love you. I owe you.

Epilogue:
For those who are interested, mom’s got it a little easier now. When I was in middle school, she began dating my stepdad (though he wasn’t my stepdad at the time – that would be sort of backwards I think). Anyway, they got married about ten years back, and I got another sister just days before my 18th birthday. They all moved to upstate New York a couple years ago – back into the neighborhood where my stepdad grew up. They live in a nice house on a large lot – complete with their own little pond.

Epilogue to Epilogue:
The pond has an island in the middle of it. Ducks live there.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 11th, 2002 at 4:21 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.