Mom

I lost my mother last September. She was 86. She was also a teacher, poet, and whiskey drinker.

When I lost my dad, back in September of 2021, it was a much different situation. He was hit by a stroke, out of the blue, and then he was gone. He was almost 83, and I was sure he’d be around well into his 90s because he had been in great shape.

Mom had a much tougher path. She’d taken a couple of falls since Dad passed, and they really messed her up. By the end, she was in chronic pain and had to be heavily medicated. She spent her last two months with home hospice care, dependent on others to get to the bathroom and move from chair to bed. It was an undignified life, and she hated that; hated being a bother to anyone. So when she passed, it was really a blessing because her suffering was over.

So now my brother, sister, and I are 60-year-old orphans.

I can’t complain because we’ve had a good run. So many people lose one or more parents early in life, so we made out. I hope my retirement is half as good as theirs was. But still, over the last several months, things would happen in my life, and I’d itch to tell Mom about them, and it would come back to me that she was gone, leaving me nothing to do with my news. She loved to hear stories about the latest thing the dog did, or how our kitchen renovation was going. I guess I never outgrew the phase where I want to tell my parents about something I did and get their approval.

Anyway, we had her Celebration of Life last Saturday, and a slew of relatives came to Baltimore from Pittsburgh, California, and North Carolina, to enjoy lunch, some drinks, and tell some stories and remembrances about Mom.

2016

This was my presentation:

Once upon a time, a traveling entertainer was on the road and came across a beautiful kingdom. He asked the first person he saw to direct him to the palace, so he could request an audience with the king and ask about landing a performing gig there.

Eventually, he was shown to an ornate chamber where the king and queen sat high on their thrones. Brought before the royal couple, he realized that the spotty road food he’d eaten earlier had left him uncontrollably gassy, and he loudly passed some of it before he could even begin.

The king was greatly offended and thundered, “How dare you fart before my queen?”

To which, the entertainer replied, “I’m sorry, Your Grace, I didn’t know it was her turn!”

 

That was one of the first jokes my mom ever taught me. She knew that potty jokes always landed with grade-school boys. So she provided me enough material to kill on the playground for years to come. That was helpful because when you’re always the new kid and you’re not the biggest or toughest, it’s good to be funny. She also inspired in me a love of wordplay, which I’ve used to torment my friends and family ever since.

I’ve always said that I’m a combination of both my parents. Some things I got from Dad were the need for things to make sense and call Bullshit when it doesn’t, the will to mess with people just for fun, and an enhanced sense of practicality.

From Mom, I inherited much different set of personality traits.

The first was a need to create via writing. I never had Mom’s gift for poetry, but I picked up journaling from her, which fed my need to chronicle and catalog everything in my life, like a born scorekeeper. Like, it’s not worth doing if you can’t record it and tell someone about it later.

And with writing came her family’s knack for storytelling. Her father and brother were two of the masters, and Mom carried on the tradition, regaling us with the family stories from her childhood and on. Modern life doesn’t provide us with as many one-on-one storytelling opportunities as it used to, so I turned to writing and eventually blogging to tell my stories.

Mom was my first editor, from book reports to research papers, and all I ever wanted to hear was, “That’s fine, turn it in as is.”

Now, I never, EVER, heard that. And remember that all of this was back before the internet or even onscreen word processing. I had to use a manual typewriter, and it wasn’t until college that I got to use a fancy electric one. So, anything more than a small misspelling meant that I’d have to type the whole damned thing over again. Sometimes we’d go round and round about a correction. It took a while before I realized that she was always right about those things, and it would have been easier on me if I had just gotten started on the retyping.

I remember once I mailed Mom a short story I’d written up, and that Sunday when I called for feedback, Dad answered the phone. I asked where Mom was, and he told me she was out, shopping for more red pens.

That was probably just Dad messing with me, but I couldn’t be certain.

Another gift from Mom was that of political activism, idealism, and the pursuit of social justice. I learned empathy from her and to try to leave the world better than I found it. Again, that’s another thing that surfaced in my more recent writing. Mom was my biggest fan and usually the first commenter, right up until she could no longer use an iPad.

Sometimes, still, in these last few months, I’d do up an essay and think, “Mom will really like this one… oh yeah...shit.”

Not only was she our mom, but she often acted as a backup, auxiliary Mom to the rest of the Neighborhood. All of my closest friends knew that when they were having troubles at home, they could come by for some comfort and a hot meal. Especially on Friday nights, when everyone knew they could find a crock pot full of mac n cheese. That was Mom’s specialty. My buddies would go on about its savory qualities, describing everything from the aroma to the ~pfffft~ sound it made when you broke the top layer.

And then there were the Morning-After-Barn-Party detox sessions. I’d crawl down from my room and survey all the human wreckage sitting around the kitchen table… blankets around their shoulders, hair all messed up, and Mom plying them with coffee and hot homemade cinnamon rolls. We’d reconstruct the night by playing another game of I Did What? Mom would just be over there shaking her head in exasperation.

Sadly, the Crock Pot Mac n Cheese came to an end during the time Mom was staying with us. Mom was always saying, “What can I do? What can I do?” Mostly it was just “Get out of the way, get out of the way,” but sometimes Sweetpea would ask her to make a batch of mac n cheese, which Mom was only too happy to do.

Then one night, as I dug into a big helping, it tasted a bit off. I couldn’t quite place the ingredient, so I tried some more. Still not right. Then Sweetpea took a bite, scrunched up her face, and asked Mom, “What did you put in this?”

Mom said, “Just some olive oil,” and pointed to the bottle of dish soap on the counter.

Meanwhile, I was still poking around my plate, trying to find a place that didn’t have as much soap in it. I just couldn’t stand having to dump the whole batch, but it had to be done. And that’s when we figured it was time to retire Mom’s wooden spoon, which as my brother and I fully remember, she could wield like a ninja when we needed our foolishness to end.

At my parents’ 50^th anniversary event, Dad explained that there were two reasons they’d been married for so long. For one, he traveled a lot. And the other was that he married an angel. When it was Mom’s turn she stood and said, “Everything he said is true,” then sat back down.

I think she might well have been an angel, or at least as close as we humans get. We're fortunate that we’ve been able to stand in her light as long as we have. I know we’re all better people for having had her in our lives. May her spirit live on through us.

2013

Doing the Passport Boogie

The thing to remember about the SAVE Act is that it’s not tied to the current president. This was something dreamed up in Project 2025, meaning it comes from the Heritage Foundation, the architects of Republican plans and strategy. So even if it doesn’t pass soon, in its current form, we may well see it surface again.

With that in mind, Sweetpea and I took steps last week to obtain passports, which seem to be the silver bullet to getting registered to vote. Both of us have expired passports. Hers is recent, but not recent enough to just get it renewed. Plus, she underwent a name change when we got married, meaning if the SAVE Act ever goes through, she’d be affected by the new registration requirements.

My passport was laughably old; I got it in 8^th grade to take a spring break school trip to Paris and London. But still, the passport directions said that it could be used to provide proof of citizenship for a new one. I don’t necessarily need a passport to vote, but I figured, for one, you never know what new voter suppression wrinkle they’ll come up with next, so it’s best to be prepared. Also, we may want to go someplace exotic once Sweetpea finally retires from teaching. So why rush later when I can just go through the process with Sweetpea, at our leisure? She was on spring break last week, so it provided the perfect opportunity.

I could have used my official birth certificate copy, but the directions gave me pause. They said it had to look like “this,” showing a certificate-looking, generic document. My copy looks like a DMV application, not “certificate-like” at all. My dad obtained the copy in 1975 from the state of Pennsylvania, and that’s how they came. He needed it to get social security numbers assigned for his three kids, to present each of them with 10 shares of stock, as Christmas presents. The copy should have been enough, but I didn’t trust that it would, in this day and age of agencies adhering to every iota of a rule. Just to be safe, I applied online for a new copy. It still hasn’t arrived, so I don’t know what it will look like. I figured, if I end up needing it, I’d rather it already be on the way. But that was a $15 charge.

I looked up the government website that covered passports and found the form they require. There was nothing complicated about it, but it required that you supply the city and county in which your parents were born. I knew, but that could be a stumbling block for others. You could fill out the form online and then print it, so I did that, rather than risking a data mistake due to my atrocious handwriting, should I complete the form by hand.

I’d been in a drug store about a month ago and noted that they did passport pictures, so we went there for ours. They charged $16.99 per shot. I suppose we could have taken them ourselves, but it seemed to be an intricate process to make sure you were lined up correctly. I figured we’d leave it to the professionals. We don’t know what we don’t know.

Then, photos in hand, I went back to the computer and looked up where we could submit our applications. Our local post office was our best bet, so we set up an appointment for last Tuesday. I thought there would be some kind of back room they’d take you to for going over the paperwork, but they did it right there at the window. We also saw that they take passport photos as well, and we probably should have used them because theirs were only $15. Furthermore, we learned that the drug store missed that Sweetpea had her glasses pushed up on her head. Directions stated that no one may wear hats or glasses for their picture, and that includes glasses on the head. So we had to pop for another photo.

After chuckling about my junior high passport photo no longer resembling my old, grizzled ass, the clerk took in our documents and got us settled quickly. The charges were $35 for the Post Office fee and $130 for the passport fee. The $130 had to be cash or check, no credit cards. So the total for each of us was $181.99, plus the $15 for the extra photo and birth certificate, which brought it to $196. Can you say “poll tax?”

We were in a position to handle the cost, but do you think many people working for an hourly wage are going to cough that up for a passport they wouldn’t otherwise need, just to cast a vote? That’s the exact result expected by those who dreamed up the SAVE Act. It was designed to be a deterrent, so only the well-to-do (who traditionally skew conservative) would vote. It should have been called the SAVE our GOP Asses Act. And that’s not just me blowing smoke. Republicans are saying the same thing:

This is why it angers me so much, and why I keep beating this dead horse. The Republicans know that their true goals play very poorly with the average citizen, basically anyone who’s not filthy rich. That’s why they campaign by fearmongering on religious and social issues, which don’t cost them anything. They don’t have anything tangible to offer towards the economy or environment, to draw people in. They want to cut the programs millions of people rely on, like Social Security, Medicare, libraries, the postal service, FEMA, SNAP, WIC, etc. If it’s money going to common people, they want it cut. So they literally have nothing left to attract the people they’re financially harming; all they have left is rigging the voting system. They close election stations, reduce the number of voting machines, coerce Red states to gerrymander to pick up districts any way they can (thus triggering Blue states to do the same in response), limit early voting, curtail or eliminate mail-in ballots, and add onerous and expensive voter registration requirements.

They do all this so that rich people can get richer by rigging the tax system and business regulations, obtaining sweetheart government deals, and ensuring their grip never weakens. They don’t give a shit about you or anyone else. All we are to them is a resource to be exploited.

Let There Be Light

A lot went on last week. The Iran War dragged on, with various accounts of whether there was a win, talks were going on, talks were never going on, the “decimated” Iran air defenses were active enough to shoot down two of our jets, we successfully retrieved the pilots, the Attorney General was fired, and the president sent out a profane Easter message to all, with a shout out to Allah. Just another week in the life. But what’s really important is that I fixed something around the house. Now that I’m retired, I’m going to have to do a lot more of that.

My dad wasn’t much of a “fix-it” guy. He could do some basic stuff, but was never one of those toolbox and workshop types. So I never inherited the home repair gene. Granted, I’ve spent most of my adult life as an apartment dweller, so there wasn’t much I ever needed to do, aside from changing bulbs, hanging a few pictures, or hooking up TV cable and stereo equipment. I can also build the occasional piece of furniture from a kit, like end tables or dressers. I assembled our giant entertainment center some 30-odd years ago, which took me two days. But for stuff like plumbing, painting, or electrical, I always stand aside and let the professionals take over.

My oldest buddies are most definitely certified DIYers, but they live a couple of states away. They’re not much practical use, but I do get to regale them with my tales of Bluz the Incompetent Handyman. I should have probably kept my yap shut about it over the years, but I trade the teasing for the priceless look on their faces when I tell them of the latest thing I fucked up.

Like the time I was trying to hang curtain rods in a new apartment. I had just moved out after separating from my first wife, back in the late 90s. I borrowed her electric screwdriver and was desperately trying to sink a couple of screws into a window frame. The frame was soft pine, but no matter how hard I grunted and pressed, the screw would not bite. After about 20 minutes or so, I examined the electric screwdriver a little more closely and noticed it was set to retract, so no matter how hard I pressed, it wouldn’t sink because it was turning the wrong way. (D’oh!)

I didn’t set it that way, but my mistake was assuming that it was set correctly when the Ex gave it to me. Once I flipped the switch, I was done with the curtains in about ten minutes. I had to call my buddies that night to tell them the story; it was just too good to keep to myself.

Now, to the most recent endeavor, the on/off switch to the bathroom light broke Saturday night. We figured it should be a simple matter of buying a new switch and swapping it out. I was also keen to replace the electrical outlet beside it, which was still the original piece from when the house was built in 1959. It looked like this:

The problem was that it’s not wired for modern 3-prong plugs. And unfortunately, three-prong outlets are all we could find at the local hardware store. I was pretty sure I could handle swapping out the on/off switch, but I didn’t want to start messing around with more in-depth wiring issues, so we decided to table that part and just ride with the plugs as is, because they at least still work.

Now, I haven’t worked with electrical wiring since I was a junior high student, and built a hot dog cooker by banging two nails through a piece of wood, splitting a cord from an old iron, and wiring one side to each nail. (Put the hot dog on the nails, and the part between the nails will cook in a matter of seconds. Try that at your kid’s science fair!) So the fact that I was even attempting something like this was daunting. But I figured, I’d open up the panel, take a look around, and if it was any more than taking wires off one thing and putting them on another identical thing, I’d bail and call the experts. Otherwise, I’d take a shot.

So, the first order of business was to find the circuit breaker to shut off the power to the bathroom. That took a little trial and error because while our fuse box had labels for each breaker, none of them said “bathroom.” But we found it.

I swear, even though I KNEW there was no juice, it was still nerve-wracking poking around in there. I knew that any minute, I'd get a big shock and Sweetpea would be able to see my entire skeletal system. (OK, maybe I should have watched more YouTube tutorials and fewer cartoons.)

Ultimately, it looked like something I could handle. I only needed to disconnect the two black wires from the screws (on each side) and reattach them to a new switch capsule, then screw the whole unit back into the wall and replace the cover plate.

And that’s what I did. It took about 15 minutes in full. Sweetpea ran downstairs to turn the breaker back on, and when tested, both switches worked as they should.

Then it was time for celebration. We threw our hands up, and she said, “You have created light!”

I said, “Now bring me your finest meats and cheeses!”

With that, I reviewed my mental checklist for the event:

Replace the switch capsule          ☑

Don’t black out the house         ☑

Don’t start a fire                       ☑

Don’t electrocute yourself        ☑

Don’t fuck it up                         ☑

Meats and cheeses                         ☑