The Sunday Memory Drawer - Handed Down From Mom

Unless one of your readers was born biologically in a test tube, we each come from a marriage of some DNA.  That immediately set our lives on a path with some form of direction.  Then, once we're born, the upbringing from two parents (for those of us lucky enough to have both) is usually a hybrid of the best and the worst that we see in our fathers and mothers.   This naturally results in an emotional taffy pull that most of us endure for our entire lives.

I'm no different.  And, on this day to salute Moms, let me give you a snapshot of what I wound up with from mine.  Emotionally and otherwise.

Taking the otherwise first, I got some good health genes from my mother.  How can I say that when the woman herself died at the age of 72?  Well, she abused those good attributes by a lot of chain smoking, a little drinking, and not much exercise.  My mother was never fat.  Actually, she was very thin.  Probably a direct result of a lot of chain smoking, a little drinking, and not much exercise.

But, God bless her, she had pinpoint perfect blood pressure and I was handed down that gift as well.   Regardless of the day or the year, I'm generally 110/70 just like her.  No salt restrictions for yours truly.

My mom had great hair.  No surprise since she had it tended to every Saturday morning without fail at the beauty parlor.  Okay, in later years, her coif had the consistency of a pith helmet with all that Caryl Richards Just Wonderful Hard-to-Hold Hair Spray.   But, when she died, there was still very little gray hair on top.  I seem to have been willed this genetic endowment as well.   Oh, sure, there is a thinning spot in the back and a little gray around the edges (my superb hair stylist Lisa takes care of both of those areas, thank you).  But, overall, I am my mom's hair.  Minus the lacquer that would have her hairdo stay intact in the middle of a Kansas cyclone.

Emotionally, I have a streak of my mother's impulsiveness.  I can react quickly and sometimes too soon.  That was my mom, the unofficial inventor of the "knee-jerk reaction."  

Of course, it was that headstrong-ness that led to the ultimate, long-time-in-coming divorce from my father.   Dad was stoic and, beyond not reacting quickly, he sometimes didn't react at all.   As a result,  my parents, as a unit, were bi-polar and their arguments exist inside of me to this day.

One of the internal arenas where that boxing match plays out for me is regarding, of course, money.  My mother loved to spend it.  My father hated to part with it.  As a result, I frequently deliberate and deliberate and deliberate on most major purchases.  Dad's voice.  Mom's voice.  Dad's voice.  Mom's voice.  The latter usually gets me to buy the damn thing.  At which point Dad's voice kicks in one last time.

Of course, my mom loved to part with the dollars when it came to clothes and that's no surprise to me.  To this day, I am always blown away over how well dressed she always was. Now that I recollect, my mother was a clothes junkie. Her closet was constantly filled with new stuff. 

And shoes, shoes, and more shoes. 

I got dragged at least once a week by her as she checked out the new offerings at Bromley's on Fourth Avenue in Mount Vernon. One of those dress stores that made me feel incredibly uncomfortable as I sat there quietly as Mom tried on one outfit after another. I always wondered how we could afford it all.

I got my answer a little later on when the weekly shopping jaunts included a stop at the Mt. Vernon Loan Company on Fiske Place. My mother would go up to the window, hand over an envelope, and then turn back to me.

"Don't tell your father."

Gotcha.

Over time, I noticed that the Mt. Vernon Loan Company never really disappeared from my mother's anointed rounds. When I got a little older, I was entrusted with delivering the little white envelope myself. The loan place was conveniently located in the same office building as my dentist and my orthodontist. One stop shopping. Get the rubber bands or the bite plate adjusted and pay off Mom's deficit. No fuss, no muss.

In retrospect, my mother was one of the original liberated women. Because, as soon as I was about six or seven, she was off to work. First at a pen manufacturer, then at an electrical supply place. Finally, she made the great leap to the big time. Commuting to Manhattan for a job at a major accounting firm. Meanwhile, I was hanging with the grandparents while Mom and Dad worked. And, as long as I can remember, the envelopes to the loan company kept coming.

I never questioned it all. Except I could always tell that money, as usual, always seemed to be a big discussion point between Mom and Dad. Which is why she kept working. Once she was working "downtown," the wardrobe in her closet expanded at geometric proportions. Essentially, Mom never had a dollar she couldn't spend. I learned this more and more years later when she was retired and on a fixed income.

I financially supplemented her a lot in her post-working era. She used her Social Security and her pension to pay for her rent and her food. I covered the other stuff: electric bill, the phone, the cable. It should have given her a comfort zone that was pretty cushy. Except for those months where she ran out of cash before we hit the 30th of the month. And our conversations were always the same.

"Can I borrow fifty dollars? I'm short this month."

I'd dutifully go over everything she paid for and I was always suitably confused. I could never understand how she went over budget. I'd ask the same question and get her knee-jerk reaction.

"No, I'm not paying off the loan company."

After several short months, I started to dig around. In her apartment building, she had a passel of retired friends who were also not doing their best at living check-to-check. But, instead of asking their own offspring for bailouts, they'd come to my mother. And she was more than happy to lend out some cold cash. While the budget in all the apartments on Fleetwood Avenue were balanced, my mother was building a shortfall worthy of the federal government. Forget Reagan. My mother was the true inventor of "voodoo economics."

After squelching the stimulus package that my mom was extending to her cronies, the spending returned to normal for a while. And then short months returned.

"No, I'm not paying off the loan company."

And?

"No, I'm not giving money out to the building."

Once again, I had to impose a thorough investigation of my own mother. It didn't take long to find the answer.

In a kitchen cabinet, I found over five hundred expired lottery tickets. Some weeks, she had spend more than 100 dollars, attempting to "be in it to win it." Outed as the newest member of Gamblers Anonymous, my mother tried to make nice.

"If I win the big prize, I'll give you most of the money."

Nice try, Mom. In retrospect, I guess it could have been worse. It wasn't like she was spending her money on fast living and cigarettes.

Well, she did a little of that, too.

But, while this sounds like a focus on the negative, I think of my mother on this day without her and remember those two-to-three years before she went back to work.  I was in grade school and, every Friday afternoon, she would pick me up at Grimes School on 11th Avenue and take me to the Bee Hive on Fourth Avenue.  I'd get a BLT sandwich and a malted.  Then, we'd head over to either Loews Mount Vernon or RKO Proctor's for a double feature.  Indeed, while both my parents took me to the movies, it was my mom who took me the most in those formative years.

She knew the stars.  She knew Hollywood.  Heck, she read the Photoplay magazine that I would go and pick up for her at the candy store.  From her, I got my very first appreciation of the movies.

Of all the things handed down, I cherish that the most.  Because it is still alive today.

Dinner last night:  Vegetable lo mein at Wokcano.