Dear Mom:
The
earliest reference I find to Mother’s Day is 250 B.C., when a Roman
religious festival honoring the Mother Goddess Cybele was held. It lasted for three days, and was known as
“Hilaria.”
I’d wish
you a Happy Hilaria, but let’s not provoke that look … the one I called “the
hairy eyeball,” … the one you leveled in my direction whenever I acted up. However, I do blame you for helping to set me
upon this path.
How do I
love and link to thee? Let us count the
ways and means:
--- For taking untold hours to make my Good King
Wenceslas costume for an elementary school Christmas play, only to have your
terrified, speechless monarch outrun his cues and exit stage right, leaving the
Feast Of Stephen uneaten and the peasants rolling in the aisles.
--- For not suffering an apoplectic fit (at least
in my presence) when you came out to the clothesline, looked up and saw me
sitting thirty feet above you on the end of the barn roof, straddling the peak
and holding an open umbrella.
--- For making me believe that the square bowl
and asymmetrical bookends I created in woodshop and bestowed upon you as
Hilarian tributes were the maternal keepsake equivalents of Stradavarians.
--- For holding the bucket when I overdosed on
Hostess Snowballs.
--- For not complaining about the laundry or
calling me a meathead when I was convinced I’d broken
my foot in a fall and hobbled around the house with a stick crutch, doing my
best wounded Long John Silver impression and insisting upon wearing six colored
socks secured with your nylon stocking in a simulated peg-leg.
--- For not laughing out loud when I announced
that I wanted to be the first astronaut to juggle bowling pins in zero gravity.
--- For not crying out loud when I rehearsed this
by juggling the good china in earth gravity.
--- For helping me get through the Great Pet
Massacre, when the family dog got into the barn and chewed all my pet rabbits
into furblivion.
--- For not selling me to Gypsies (I always
believed this was a parental option Plan B) when you found out I’d been
emptying Dad’s electric razor into the peppershaker.
--- For mending the
fences, tending the fires, warming the cockles, baking the biscuits, planting
the seeds, running the gauntlets, burying the bones, sewing the buttons, paying
the pipers, fluffing the pillows, minding the P’s and Q’s ... and helping me
become what I am today.
Uh-oh. Here comes that look again.
Happy
Hilaria, Mom.
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Senior Wire News Service syndicated humor columnist B. Elwin Sherman writes from Bethlehem, NH. His new book, “Walk Tall And Carry A Big Watering Can,” is now available. You may contact him via his blog here at witbones.com. Copyright 2014. All rights reserved. Used here with permission.
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