The Book of Ma

Happy Ma’s Day!

Really, I don’t think I ever called the woman who bore me “Mother” or “Mom.” But what I would call her is one of a kind.

Like so many moms, Helen borrowed heavily from the “Official Book of Motherly Mantras.” For example, I stood perpetually accused of “Air Conditioning All of Oxon Hill” when I’d leave a door open during summer. My room was also routinely compared to a “Pig Sty”—though I’m fairly confident that Dad’s Jersey Girl never set foot on a farm.

And, of course, all debate was quelched with a stern “Because I Said So.”

However, Ma had a way of speaking all her own, still retaining her Jersey attitude even 40, 50, 60 years after moving to the warm gentility of Southern Maryland. She scribed her own Book of Ma.

Ma on Gifts and Holidays

Ma had little use for gifts. She was minimalist before minimalist was cool. Ma cleared the house of trinkets and items with the efficiency of the U.S. Army clearing out Venezuelan soldiers. Try asking her what she wanted for her birthday, Christmas, or Mother’s Day, and she’d make a face. “Nuthin’. Every Day’s the Same as the Next.”

You’d push. “C’mon. You gotta want something.”

Another face. Another mantra: “If I Can’t Eat It, Wear It, or Spend It, I Don’t Want It.”

Ma on Booze

In her later years, my nephew cracked the code that would get Ma to come to … and stay … at family functions. Have a martini ready when she arrived, plus a promise from my brother-in-law to take her home the minute she wanted to go.

Me? I wasn’t into alcohol. I was into soda. A Cokehead, you might say. I could gulp down half a gallon a day, which would infuriate my mother when she’d have a rare craving for Coke and find the fridge and pantry empty. In response, Ma took to hiding soda in her bedroom closet. My form of youthful rebellion? Sneaking some of that soda, like a thief siphoning off gasoline.

Responded my Ma, “Why Don’t You Drink Beer Like Other Kids?!”

One day, years after I’d switched to drinking diet soda, was buying soda any time I wanted, and lived 3,000 miles away, I came home for a visit. Ma asked me to get something out of her closet. I went. Tucked deep in the corner was a 2-liter bottle of Coke.

“Ma, what are you doing? I don’t drink Coke anymore.”

“Not Taking Any Chances.”

Ma on Dating

Ma was clear and blunt when it came to any topic under the sun … except for some reason, my dating habits. For example, she never expressed how much she adored and respected my college girlfriend and hoped we would be married. (Well, until about a week before she married someone else. “Now you tell me?!”)

I eventually learned Ma’s love language was cooking. If she urged someone to have dinner, that was the sign I’d picked a winner.

However, I also learned her not-so-love language. I’d introduce her to some new woman, then later ask, “How’d you like her?”  She’d respond with the mantra, “I Never Judge on First Impressions.”

This, I eventually came to understand, meant, “My first impression is … LOSER.”

There was one exception to the rule. She absolutely did not like that I was close to a particular woman from the neighborhood. Let’s call her Wendy.

Ma calls me one day in California and offers to pay to fly me home for a visit. “Sure!” I say.

“Only one condition. You don’t see Wendy.”

“What if I pay half and see her once?” I joked.

My mother turned into Tommy Lee Jones from “The Fugitive.”

“I Don’t Bargain.”

Ma on Children

When it came to children, my mother would act the curmudgeon. I say “act” because one suspects even after decades it was hard for Ma to experience grandchildren and great-grandchildren without my father being there with her.

When asked why she wasn’t the typical cooing, doting, “Please let me babysit”-type grandmother, she’d say, “I Raised My Kids.”

Not that she didn’t love her grandkids and great-grandkids and was proud of them. She just put it in her own way in another of her mantras: “Anyone Can Procreate. But Getting a Degree is a Real Accomplishment.”

Toward the end of her life, Ma greatly warmed up to her growing number of great-grandchildren. She lit up talking about one newcomer so brightly she nearly burnt my retinas.

Which is why I believe this Ma’s Day she’d be tickled to know her first great-grandchild—she’s got a nursing degree, Ma—just gave birth my mother’s first great-great-grandchild.

The generations roll on. Emily is now a mother herself, on her way to becoming a “ma.” She will quote from the same Official Book of Motherly Mantras and eventually craft her own Book of Ma.

Meanwhile within little baby Addie is the blood of my mother. In fact, in an adorable picture posted for her one-month birthday, I swear I can see Ma’s eyes in that precious and beautiful round face. A look that says, “Be warned: I’m gonna do things my way … and I’m not gonna suffer fools.”

And that’s my prayer this Ma’s Day: that Ma’s newest descendant will have the same strength, honesty, heart, and humor as that smart mouth from Jersey.  

Oh, and won’t steal soda.

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