I’m getting this in under the wire, before the Ides of March has passed. I have 10 minutes to write and post (or I’ll blow it and just applaud myself for trying. Afterall, embracing mediocrity and missed standards is very U. S. of A.)
Sure you got St. Patty’s Day in a couple, but for me the week is about a whole other Pat of note. The never that far from my thoughts (unless that makes me complete batshit, loopy, Norman Bates crazy) Pat, the Pat the Crab of historic note. My mater who would have been 77 this year, had she lived so long, and surely would have said something bitter as crushed aspirin on your tongue but just as likely funny, witty, cripplingly cutting. Alas. Today is the St. Pat’s Day for me.
The interesting thing about her birthday being today was the oddity of listening to a co-worker bitch about her mother. One of the greatest things about Pat is she opined on her children’s adult lives, oh fuck ya, she had opinions, but intrusive the woman was not. Well, her intrusions were essentially psychological warfare not physical insinuation.
The chick at work has had a slew of as yet unresolved chronic health issues. Pretty much a raw deal all around of not feeling well, but able to be out and about, yet not nailing a “cure,” if such a formula might there be. She was born in a country far, far, far away, and that’s where her family is. Except they’re not, because she’s sick, so they flew right out to give her a hand. (Or, actually, bum her out and otherwise cause stress in that special way of any parent of adult children.)
My point being — Shit, the mountain, as in the one to which Mohammed better get her ass, because the mountain sure as hell would not be coming to her, the mountain that was Pat in her castle, would not have flown half-way across the world to hold my hand. No fucking way. And, for that I thank her, on my knees truly grateful, happy dance, thank her.
Why? Because the shit-side of the adult stick is fixing your own stuff. I think one of the coolest legacies that Pat left behind is we all can take care of our own damnselves, thank you very much. Sure, caring is good, relating with others, living, loving, blah, fucking, blah, yay family. All swell. At the end of the day, though, there’s enough work going on to get through life that if everyone could mind their own patches, we’d all be fine.
I can’t even imagine being sick and also having to deal with keeping up some semblance of a respectable life suitable to a visiting mother. I only hope M. realizes how lucky he has it that there is not even any possible specter of that domestic scene.
Completely, unrelated, but maybe a bit, because it’s still Pat talk, she really should have hung around a bit longer. She should have done that and not given up. I was talking about that with Number One Son, my family’s oldest sibling.
(By the way, “#1 son” was always a perhaps racist nod most likely to Charlie Chan. It was said as a phrase that was definitely foreign and vaguely “Oriental.” Imagine my surprise, me a knee-jerk liberal, a wordsmith, a multi-culti, bobo cliche with an ear toward cultural sensitivity (or me, a screaming, stereotyping, rabid racist, you decide), anyway imagine my surprise when I met M.’s Asian family. His aunts were all introduced to me as #1 aunt, #2, etc.)
So many things, though, had Pat lived she would have been pretty pumped. I believe she would like M. I know she would be happy that I’m not miserable. (I really miss that I will never know what surprising variations on stereotypes she would come up with–at minimum along with the usual potato dish at a family gathering, I expect there would be a bowl of rice. She might even dig up chopsticks from some where and have them ready for her guest (especially if by some weird insurance disaster, Building 19 ended up with a stockpile).
Number 1 Son pointed out she would love that finally one of us, his son, is at a private, Catholic school. Not for the Catholic part, but for the intimacy of a parochial education providing an edge she wanted for any of her own kids, had we not all patently refused. She likely would sit by one of the large, bay windows in the late afternoon, watching while her grandson ran by training with his track team.
I also just found out that the nephew in name, but pseudo-first grandson, my cuz (who I won’t name, because the idea of publishing my thoughts here offends his finer sensibillities. Mostly because he’s a pussy), cousin will be breaking the Y chromosome streak. That event would have had her shopping retail and buying ever cute girly thing in sight. Dollhouses would be hammered out overnight. Manna would fall from heaven.
Seriously, she would buy retail baby clothes. Full price. I have no doubt.
Sleep would probably be a pursuit beyond swell right about now. I’ll end this little bit of lengthy and not sufficiently honorable memorial post with another thought.
Two weeks after I hit the same age as my father died, and in the same week as my mother’s birthday, they’ve had a week-long special lunch event at the employment place. They’re showing a video repeatedly of how to use the portable defibrillators, they’ve added in discreet corners of the building.
They really do spare no expense for the work environment.
Happy Pat Day ! I remember you telling me about how you had to convince her that the prices at the Star in Braintree were cheaper than the Star Market in Cambridge so she would let you take her grocery shopping.My sainted white haired mother still doesn’t trust me to take the trash out correctly, I’ll do it wrong. I never met your mother, but I feel like I did. God rest her soul.
How true, I enjoyed reading.