Happy Not Mother's Day!

Rat and Packie, as they are known in the family. 

Mom doesn't like Mother's Day. Scratch that. She hates Mother's Day. She's serious about this. "It's just a way to sell ya a bunch of junk," Ma will tell you.

She told me in my teens, long after she stopped receiving hand-drawn cards from her kids: "I'd rather you tell me you love me every other day of the year than on Mother's Day."

Here we are, the longest possible period of time to next year's Mother's Day. Other moms got their cards and flowers and moved on to work today. Mom would have thrown her card out by now, probably.

Scanning the Florida coast for her
youth and vitality, stolen from her
at the tender age of 27. By me.

She's a pragmatic lady. She came by it honestly. Grandma worked as a vice president in a Florida bank back when women didn't work as vice presidents at banks. And she had four kids at home, which probably explains why she parented in a certain way. To this day, Mom still thinks you can't lift the lid off a cooking pot of rice because it will stop cooking. That's what her mother told her; chances are it was to keep the four kids out of her way in the kitchen.

She did the same thing to me, albeit unintentionally. When I moved to Utah, my roommates made fun of me because I kept the flour in the refrigerator. I had to call Mom, with my roommates giggling in the background, to ask why I keep the flour in the fridge.

"Well, when you grow up in North Miami and there are bugs everywhere, you keep the flour in the refrigerator to keep the bugs out," she told me.

That makes sense. So why did you keep doing it when you moved to Minnesota?

"I guess it just became a habit."

For me, too. I picked up a lot of things from mom. Sure, she taught me how to cook. But we have the same mentality. A plus B always equals C. We are a very literal people. We talk about our problems with people. We like to figure out the root of the problem and solve the problem. We don't particularly care for yuppies and hipsters, though we enjoy their food and drinks.

And we are loyal. Boy are we loyal. Mom still listens to the same five musicians she listened to in the 1960s and 1970s. They are, in descending order of preference, The Beatles, Al Green, Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin and Credence Clearwater Revival. The last time, to my knowledge, she discovered a new musician was 1995 (Corey Stevens, who is basically Stevie Ray Vaughan). She drives the same car year after year until the wheels fall off at 200,000 miles. Then she gets a new car and does the same to that car. She drinks gin and (diet) tonic. She's also stuck with my Dad for 45 years, so that's significant.

And me? A friend I haven't talked to in 10 years could call me tomorrow and ask me to fly out to help him move and I'd be on Travelocity looking up airfare. That's how we roll. We're loyal.

She's not a shmooshy mom, though. She does fake baby talk to make fun of how people hug and embrace. Her "pet nickname" from Dad is Sugar Booger. They hate pet nicknames to the point that they make up gross pet nicknames. This is why I am the way I am.

Mom was a nurse but she would have made a good journalist. Obviously, she has the snark down. And she hates math, like every good journalist. Once we got Mom addicted to email, she wrote clear, concise messages like a natural. She's too pragmatic for anything else.

And everybody seems to *LOVE* her. When Molly or Joanne or any of the Portland friends hear that my parents are coming to town, everybody says, "Oh, your mom's coming! I love your mom!" The snarky, Schortemeyer side of me doesn't understand the appeal. She's just going to sit and chat with people. We're not going deep sea fishing or hiking Everest. But that's the effect Sugar Booger has on people.

Don't tell her, but I sorta like her. She's proud of me. She seems to like me. And she's busy as a bee in retirement, running around at church or watching owls with Dad. She's just doing her thing. I'm thankful that her "thing" includes visiting The Wife and I in Maine for weeks at a time, even if our time together mostly consists of hanging out with my friends who all want to see her. She's a popular lady. Happy Not Mother's Day, Mom.