There is a blessed optimism to most moms, a lilt to everything they do. I even like their handwriting.
Two birds just had sex right in front of me – mocking birds, ironically.
Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it…
A younger friend says a feeding frenzy is going on among the Millennials as they get vaxed and back on the make.
Evidently, the mocking birds are following their example, one chasing the other under a car, fluttering and flirting, wings this way and that.
The female was the aggressor, as is the norm these days, at least according to the Cardi B songs I use as romantic reference points.
Look, I never met a weekend I didn’t like. I’m about to pour the biggest damn glass of bourbon you ever saw, maybe in a vase, maybe in an upside down bongo drum. Might add the fresh mint that my pal Slavin dropped off, and a pint of simple syrup.
I think that would qualify as one of those mint juleps they serve at the Derby.
And they’re off…
Obviously, I’m a glutton for the weekend, and I want to make this one count, though I’ll be spending much of it on baseball diamonds. Or as I call it: “the jewelry store.”
See what I did there?
Hey, they can’t all be gems.
Wish my mom were still around. She loved puns, while I groaned and rolled my eyes.
Now I laugh at puns too. I am older now than my mother was when I remember her best – 40 to 45, when she was in the midst of raising three kids, her glory days, no doubt, the era when she felt she mattered the most…when there was love and mustard in every sandwich.
That’s how I remember her, pressing her fingerprints in the Wonder Bread, laughing at her own silly jokes. She was a French force of nature. Had they given her a gun, France never would’ve lost a war.
She walked the dog in blue heels and vacuumed in pleated skirts. But she was strong as steel.
Mothers: Still the toughest substance known to man.
Been a bad week for strong moms. My friend Anne lost her mother, Lanora, on Thursday, and Verge is now mourning his.
“Your mom’s name is Margo?” I asked him earlier this week.
“Why?” he texted back.
“I wanna get the prayers right.”
Look, there’s been a lot of praying going on lately. God needs a break. Last thing He needs is a bunch of junk mail prayers addressed to RESIDENT. God needs names, details, occupations, hobbies.
So here’s to Margo, who passed this morning. She insisted there be no crying at her funeral, only laughs. And here’s to Lanora and to all the strong moms, the very foundation of a functional society, more important than doctors and journalists, politicians and police.
Hey, if we just listened to our moms a little better, we wouldn’t even need police. We’d barely need laws.
For some reason, while focusing on my friends’ moms, I recalled an ancient little ditty my own mother used to sing:
“Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy, a kid’ll eat ivy too, wouldn’t you?”
Slurred together, as the Andrews Sisters sang it, it sounded like.
“Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey…
Dogpark Gary told me his mother used to sing “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…”
There is a blessed optimism to most moms, a lilt to everything they do. I even like their handwriting, civilized and elegant, musical and extra loopy.
If everybody were a mom, it’d be a better world.
Then again, what would Shakespeare have written about? More importantly, what would Cardi B sing?
Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy…
Life is pursuit and capture, love and heartbreak, birds chasing birds, bees chasing bees … me chasing fish bowls of freshly minted bourbon.
Now, in a little bungalow on the far west side of America, my lovely and patient pregnant daughter counts down the week or so till her first baby arrives – already 7 pounds, 13 ounces, the doctors estimate.
A perfect nursery awaits. The new pup practices guarding the crib.
“Sleep now,” I urged her the other day, “because for the next 20 years, it’ll be at the mercy of someone you love more than you love yourself.”
Such daddy wisdom.
My older daughter responded that she’d slept till 9:30 the past three days, which I suspect is her body preparing for launch.
Boy or girl? Only the doctors know.
Lefty or righty? Republican or Democrat? I can’t get an answer.
Believer in lost causes? Lover of longshots and super-sized mint juleps?
We can hope so.
The other night, I turned off the kitchen lights and, in that quiet moment of repose, I paused to soak up that feeling you get when you’ve made it through another long day – when you’ve tucked away the leftover rice and wiped down the counters and made sure the dog has water.
I’m a single dad who has learned to appreciate moms more than ever. I’m a single man who realizes the laundry is never done.
And I realize that parenting is never really over. Till it’s finally over.
“So weary with disasters, [so] tugg’d with fortune,” as per Macbeth.
Say a prayer.
Missed a column? Check out ChrisErskineLA.com for past posts, books, ballcaps, clothing and the coolest gin & tonic glasses around. Thanks for your support.
