I was really missing being with my family yesterday and was getting all nostalgic for them. I talked to all of them on the phone throughout the day, which was nice, but it wasn't the same. I love them all very much and...well, I was thinking about my mom and thought that maybe if you knew her, you'd understand why I miss her so much.
So with that, I give you my mother....
P.S. Mom, please don't kill me for this! I love you!
SWAMI MOMMY
My family is crazy. I know that everyone’s family is crazy to them, but I sometimes think mine is truly crazy. It seems to have affected women in the family the most, so I assume it is passed down from my mother. My father has his problems and bi-decade flip out, but he isn’t crazy. My brother seems to have the only sense of normalcy out of the craziness. He has done some crazy things, but they are too far and few between to consider him crazy.
People always thought my mom was so cool and weird. I loved her and needed her, but I knew her goal in life was to embarrass or freak me out. I would tell her that I wanted her shoes when she died (I have no idea why I used to say this) and she would tell me she was going to bury them with her so I couldn't have them and laugh and laugh. She would often threaten to haunt us when she was dead to get us back for all the times we stood at the bathroom door yelling, "Mom! Mom! Heidi touched my hair!" She would get out of the tub and say to us, "I swear that when I'm dead, I'm going to haunt you both! I'm going to hover over your beds and go, 'Heather! Heidi looked at me!' 'Heidi! Heather looked at me!" just so you know the hell that I am in!"
She would tell guys bagging our groceries or working the drive-thru that I thought they were cute as an adolescent, which drove me insane. She would hear music playing in the stores and start saying that she had happy feet and just start dancing wherever she was and my sister and I would enevitably run off. She once farted in Walden Books and looked at me and loudly exclaimed, "Heather! That is disgusting!" And walked off leaving me in her fart cloud surrounded by glaring looks of other customers. She once told me and my ex-husband that we needed to watch more porn to help our marriage when I was talking about how long it had been since we'd had sex. And I can't tell you how many times when my sister and I were fighting in public, she would yell, "Great! Now you've both given me diarrhea!" and then drag us to the nearest public restroom, where indeed she did.
My mother despite being the only person who can truly embarrass me, as she is more brazen than I am, is also one of the coolest people I know. I was the kid on the playground who pointed to "Fuck" spray painted on the handball court and told everyone what fuck meant, because I knew it all pretty young. She was our getaway car when my friends and I would go toilet papering, so long as she knew the person who's house was being victimized. She let friends stay with us when they ran away, had abortions, or just needed to be somewhere where they could have an understanding parent, without having to answer to their own. She has always been open and honest with us kids and we all have a great relationship with her and she knows almost everything about what he have done in our past and are doing in our present, and she doesn't judge. Most of the time she laughs her ass off at us.
There is one thing that particularly sticks out to me about my mother. Her morning uniform through most of our life.
My mother slept a lot, and would stay in bed as long as possible before driving us to school. Her chauffeur uniform was always the same, a pair of matching sweats and high heels. The sweats were what she preferred to wear, and the high heels meant she didn’t have to mess with putting on shoes in a hurry. She often left with her “momhawk” as she called it. While sleeping, the center of her hair would gather together to form an arch, a temple to the hair gods. She would sit up and her hair would be slightly poofy on the sides, but in the center of her head was a large, Mohawk-like fan of hair. We’d be so scared that someone would witness that our mother had a momhawk, and would risk being seen that way.
One day my mother actually showered before taking us to school. She put on her sweats and her high heels, and headed out the door with a towel on her head. “MOM! You can’t wear a towel on your head!” She laughed and loaded me up into the car to drive me to my death sentence…parental humiliation and at the tender age of only seven. We approached the turn for the drop off of my school. I stared at her toweled head in horror and started to cry. “Please take the towel off your head,” I bawled. My mom told me to lighten up and kept driving. We turn into the school and I hit the floor. I won’t let anybody know it’s MY mom. I laid on the floor crying, “Drop me off around the corner. Please Mommy, drop me off around the corner.”
Instead she rolled down her window and started to sing to the children, “I’m Heather’s Swami Mommy”. I was a goner. There was no way I could ever go to school again. The thing is, I can’t remember if she dropped me off at the corner or made me get out of the car in front of the main entrance, but I remember the terror of the moment. Years later, she was driving my brother to junior high school, when her car broke down on the main road to the school. She was blocking the lane, and a cop soon pulled up behind her. She explained that the car had broken down. The officer asked her and my brother to get out of the vehicle. She tried to convince him that she needed to stay IN the vehicle, but he wouldn’t hear of it. She grudgingly opened the car door and got out to reveal her hot pink sweats, matching heels, lack of a bra, and a large momhawk.
She started getting ready before taking us to school from then on.
Love you Mom!
Heather McDuffin
The Egg McMuffin
