It's an odd moment in a child's life when you realize that your mom is just a person; like any other person except infintely more spectacular than any other person you've ever met because, well, she's your mom. And when I say, "because she's your mom," the spectacularity of it comes not from the fact that you are you and she has the fortune to be your mom, but rather from the fact that she was responsible for your creation, and had she never existed, perhaps exactly the way she existed, you might not be you. (You know, a butterfly flaps its wings in Hong Kong and so on....) What's even weirder, is when you realize that you are exactly like your mom. Cheekbones and all.
Tonight while nosing around through some old photo albums I stumbled across a couple of my mom's old scrapbooks from when she was in high school and college in Wisconsin in the late 60's and early 70's. There were a bunch of letters from her then-boyfriend and now ex-hus
band, John, and a somewhat startling number of the exact same picture of him. I think it must have been his senior picture from high school and there were, honestly, at least 20 of them. I mean how many times can you give a person the same freaking picture of yourself?? From the other items in the scrapbook (cards attached to flowers he'd given her, birthday cards, anniversary cards, etc.) I've decided that he was -- officially -- a bit creepy. Youth may have had something to do with it, but I am SO glad she decided to eventually procreate with my dad, and not him.
Looking through the pages I started to wonder if maybe I shouldn't be looking at some of it, but then I remembered the box of old letters (and probably about 15 of his 8th grade picture in various sizes) that I have of Brantley's (and whoever else's) that is buried in the depths of my closet. There's a reason that I still have all my old journals, and there's a reason I still have that box and just can't seem to throw it away. It's so that someday, God willing, if I have kids, they'll be able to discover that stuff and go, "Oh my God! This reminds me so much of me I can't believe it!" Just like I did tonight.
Going through her old clippings was fun because it was like going back in time. Postage stamps were 6 cents, and all the postmarks say "Titletown USA" with a little outline of a football, obviously honoring The Packers. There was the page from up above in one of them, which has the autographs of a bunch of old Packers players, including Bart Starr! I also found out that my Aunt Annette once got to meet Vince Lombardi because she and two other women organized a Flag Day for a Packers' game, when a bunch of people in the crowd had little miniature USA flags, and she made the paper with him.
She had the Green Bay newspaper from when we landed on the Moon (1969?), and the photo of Neil Armstrong's first steps on the lunar surface took up the entire front page, the way the Twin Towers falling did on just about every newspaper from September 12, 2001. She had pictures of guys she must have thought were dreamy, Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Ricky Nelson, the cast of Bonanza got its own page, and a bunch of other dudes I couldn't recognize if someone paid me. She had report cards and birthday cards and pictures and ticket stubs. She had the receipt from when she got the cat we still had when I was a kid, Yossarian. Apparently he was a birthday present from her ex-husband on her birthday in 1971. They paid $3 and some change for him at the Humane Society. I still remember when that cat died. He was something insane like 18 or 19 years old. My mom cried so hard. I suppose that kitty cat had been through quite a bit with her. I remember reading
Catch-22
in 11th grade and thinking,
So that's where the name Yossarian came from..... Why the heck did they name the cat that?? I always just called him Yo Yo Kitty.
This photo is from when she was Ado Annie in her high school's production of
Oklahoma!, she also had the newspaper article that was written about it, with the part about her underlined in what what was once blue ink.
She also had these odd magazine ads that all featured cute babies, some with cute animals next to them. She had a few cutouts from bridal magazines, one that's double-sided and has the two most hideous looking wedding dresses I have ever seen in my life on them, but which were probably very in style in the early 70's. See for yourself:
I can remember my mom telling me that the only thing she ever really wanted to do was be a mother. While I have never felt that way myself about my own life, I always considered that piece of information to be important, somehow, for the relationship I have with my mom. She's more than just a mom to me, she's my best friend. She's my biggest cheerleader, my biggest supporter. I think I've probably given her a lot of crap about mistakes she's made along the way, but I suppose that's because I never really realized that she's just a person until recently. She was always The Mom, and Moms were supposed to do certain things and not do certain other things and I gave her hell when, in my 12-year-old opinion, she was messing up. But she loved me right through it, and she still loves me, and she'll always love me, even when I lay on a guilt trip of Catholic proportions. So if she gets pissed that I read her scrapbook and thought it was cool enough to put up here then I suppose she'll forgive me for it eventually. Right mom?
