Sixty is a Myth

My husband called my mother “The Firecracker.” And she loved it. She was beautiful, smart, athletic and an amazing wife and mother. But Mama was also a lot of fun. She had a wicked sense of humor and could be just a little bit naughty. The Firecracker suited her perfectly.

When I lived and practiced law in Savannah, Georgia, I owned a red hard-top convertible. My mom owned a bright red Volkswagen bug that had a personalized license plate that said “LANNIE”. Both cars were easy to identify. One day, I was driving home from work on the Truman Expressway and I spotted my mom ahead of me. I pulled up alongside her. She suddenly sped up. I sped up to get alongside her. She abruptly slowed down. I slowed down, again trying to get her attention. This happened one more full cycle. I started to worry that she was having a stroke, so I called her. She answered her cell phone not with a hello, but with a “bitch!”

I was a bit shocked. “Mama, is that any way to greet your only daughter?”

“There is this awful lady next to me that won’t let me into the left lane to exit,” she responded.

“Mama,” I said, “look at that lady again.”

She turned to look at me in her car and then waved. “Oh hi honey!”

When I was in my teens, my mom could make me giggle uncontrollably. She would wait until we were in a confined space that I couldn’t get out of, and then say or do something that would get me started. I learned to avoid crowded elevators with her whenever I could. They were her favorite.

One time she went with me to inquire about joining a gym. The manager took us into his office and closed the door. He pulled out his bodybuilding competition photos. It was hot in there too. My mom looked at one of the photos and said, “Oh my gosh—you look like an Oscar.” And that was all it took. We were off to the races.

My mom modeled throughout my childhood. Local stores asked her to be in fashion shows. She was beautiful.

When my mom started at Michigan State, she planned to become a large-animal veterinarian. She was a lifelong horsewoman. Her counselor told her that no one would hire a woman for that. She majored in English instead, but carried her love of all animals throughout her life. We always had numerous pets growing up – dogs, cats, birds, and hamsters, to name a few.

As smart as she was, my mama could be a bit ditzy. One evening, I called my mom on my way home from work. Her phone went to voicemail, so I called my dad’s phone. He answered and put me on speaker phone to talk to them both. Eventually, he went into another room and left mom and me to talk. The phone was still on speaker phone. I couldn’t hear her well, so I asked her to speak directly into the phone.

“Is this better?”

“No, it still sounds like you are far away.”

She yelled, “can you hear me now?”

“No, it still sounds like you are far away from the phone. Are you holding dad’s phone?”

Silence.

“Mom?”

“I was talking into MY phone,” she sheepishly answered.

Laughing, I say “good, I can hear you now.”

“Tunie, can you hear me?”

“Yes mom, I can hear you now.”

“Tunie, can you hear me??”

“Yes, mama, you don’t have to shout now.”

“TUNIE, TUNIE ARE YOU THERE??!!!”

By now, I knew exactly what she was thinking: I was dead on the side of the road.

And then my dad yelled from the other room …. “OUCH!!!! It’s in my ears!!” His cellphone had bluetoothed into his hearing aids.

And both my mom and I had been yelling directly into his ears. Loudly. My mom and I burst into laughter.

She was my best friend.

Being at her side during her final years was simultaneously beautiful and absolutely heartbreaking. I remember her telling me when she left me at kindergarten for the first time that she had to pry my hand off of hers. And she cried all the way home. During my parents’ final year, there was a period of time where they had to live apart. My dad was in a rehab facility after a hip replacement and my mom was in their new home at an assisted living facility. I was visiting my mom and walked her down to her dinner at the facility. We walked holding hands as we always did. We approached the group of people waiting to enter the dining room. I could feel her gather her strength to meet these new friends, in her much more fragile state, without my dad at her side.

Once again she had to pry my hand off of hers.

This time, though, I cried all the way home.