My Mom Is 70 Today And I Hope I Am As Good Of A Mom As She Is

84426475Today is my mom’s birthday. You can say Happy Birthday Anita because I should have really been saving up all of my pennies to take her on some amazing cruise to Alaska to see the icebergs and glaciers (she has always wanted to do that) or bought her a diamond bracelet she would hate (she doesn’t like flash like that) or done something more monumental to commemorate the fact she turns 70-years-old today.

She would hate it if someone said 70-years-young. She hates stuff like that.

My mom came to American when she was six from Riga, Latvia during WW II. She didn’t speak of a lick of English, but she spoke Latvian and German and before she came to the USA they stuck her in a camp to fatten her up because she was a sickly, scrawny, malnourished thing.

She married her high school sweetheart and drank beer from cans and smoked cigarettes and teased her hair and wore twinsets and loved The Rolling Stones and gave birth to three girls and I was one of them. We moved around a lot, we were poor sometimes and not so poor at other times and growing up she never had a winter coat but my sisters and I always did.

She made really amazing lasagna, and had a restaurant, with a jukebox, that also had Van Morrison on it.

She always dressed us up for Halloween, and baked sugar cookies with us, and I had so many books growing up and cats. We had a lot of cats.

Eventually my parents divorced and then my mom had three teenage girls to raise alone with very minimal child support and she could make potatoes a million different ways. To this day she makes the best hash browns on earth.

And that’s how it would be if you came to see my mom. She would make you hash browns, or egg rolls, or these tiny little hamburgers with everything great on them and the rolls browned with butter and she would offer you a drink. Yes, there would be drinking. That is my mom – she likes to have a drink with someone and cook them their favorite food and ask them questions because she loves listening to people and she is one of those people who asks people their stories.

And I would tell you her stories and her stories with me because they are amazing and tragic and hilarious and totally cinematic in their scope, stories of nazis and abandoning fathers and death and tragedy and dinners with mobsters and murders and the time Jerry Lee Lewis tried to date her, but these are her stories, and you would have to come over to her house to eat hash browns and drink wine to hear these stories.

But I can tell you this, my mom taught me how to be a mom, and she will tell you I’m a better mom than she was, and I don’t think she is right really, because she always did the best no matter what circumstance we were in. And she was always there for me, and she still is now. We have had fights, some real doozies, and through the years we have fought and not talked and raged at each other, which is what mothers and daughters do, and still to this day she is one of my favorite people on earth.

And that’s what I want, should I be lucky enough to live until I’m 70, I want one of my own kids to love me how I love my mom.

My mom was always there when my babies were born. My mom is magic. She would be magic to you too.

She would take your baby, when your baby was crying inconsolably, and swaddle it right up and rock it and quietly sing it a lullaby in Latvian until it was fast asleep, when everything you have done has failed.

She would listen to you bitch about your partner, or your spouse, or your boss, and offer you a drink and say “What an ass.”

She would change the TV channel when someone was ranting about gay marriage and say “Stupid. Stupid people. Love is love who cares who gets married anyone who isn’t a total idiot knows gay people are born that way.”

She would read your kid the same book over and over no matter how sick you were of reading it and then make all of their stuffed animals funny dresses out of scrap fabric.

She would drive you to your abortion, and help you pay for it if you needed it.

She would be your biggest fan, and your greatest supporter, and love your kids like mad.

She would also not disown you when you were the worst teenager ever, a teenager who wore moth-eaten furs, and smoked cigarettes and dyed her hair blue black and pierced everything that could be pierced and screamed “Mom, you are such a bitch” before slamming her bedroom door and listening to Psychic TV on repeat and dating stupid older boys who would be nothing but bad for her.

Also, if you were gambling next to her in Las Vegas and you lost all your money she would cash in her quarters and give you half.

She would always tell you that you were beautiful and smart, from the time before you weren’t old enough to hold your head up on your own until you were a 43-year-old woman wondering how your own kids will talk about you when you are 70.

And my mom will hate this, because to this day she can’t take a damn compliment to save her life, and she hates people talking about her, but I sort of had to. Because she is 70, and because I don’t tell her nearly enough that I love her, and because I’m not taking her on a cruise. Maybe next year.

I love you mom. Thank you. For everything.  Happy birthday.

(Images: getty)

Similar Posts