That Kind of Mom

I have a good mom. When I was little, she was the kind of mom who could make a puppet eat one of my cookies. She was the kind of mom who helped me read the note left by the tooth fairy and explained that the writing was shaky because the tooth fairy was very small and the pen she’d used was likely one of ours. She was the kind of mom who raced me to my bedroom when I was 12 and too grown up for kiddy stuff like that, and the kind of mom who laughed when we leaped onto my bed and it broke beneath us with a magnificent crash. She was the kind of mom who just happened to need a drink of water when I came home late from a high school party, and who happened to feel like sitting at the kitchen table for the next half hour while we chatted about my night out. These days, she’s the kind of mom who makes time for a “dial-and-cry” when I’m having a bad day and who, once a week, insists we paint watercolours together. 

She’s not a perfect mom. She’s the kind of mom who threatened an elementary school bully who had choked me on the school bus and, more recently, the kind of mom who threatened a chipmunk found chewing its way through her tulip bulbs. The bully decided to stop choking kindergarten kids. The chipmunk decided to call Mom’s bluff and met a bad end. She’s also the kind of mom who used to send me to bring in laundry from the clothesline if it was dark outside. Once I begged off the job, saying I was scared of the dark. In a stern voice, she told me not to be so silly. That was when I realized she was scared of being outside alone in the dark.

Amidst the good, the great, the imperfect, and the human, my mom is also unintentionally funny. Like… Lucille Ball funny. And just as remembering every Sunday school song I’ve ever learned came in handy when I had a cranky toddler in the backseat of my car and a 30-minute drive home, so being able to recount the various exploits of “Grandmom” has served me well in times of waiting rooms and stir-crazy children.

Around the age of four, my youngest son removed a metal bell from a Christmas elf hat and swallowed it. His older brother watched him perform this amazing feat and then ran to get me. That was how we came to be in the x-ray department of the hospital later that day. My son sat on a wheeled stretcher. I stood beside him. The waiting room was full, we’d been told before a nurse had parked us in the hall and hustled away. No books, no magazines, no germ-infested toy bin. There were no pictures on the wall. Nothing but a long white hallway and a bed on wheels. The most obvious and entertaining solution to our boredom would have been to race that bed up and down the hallway like a couple of drunk college kids with a grocery cart. However, hospitals frown on that sort of behaviour. Instead, I dug into my Mary Poppins bag of Grandmom stories.

“You know,” I began, “when I was little, we had lots of animals: goats, chickens, ducks, horses, a cow, a dog, a cat, two rabbits.” Besides raising four children with my dad, working as a registered nurse, and volunteering in any youth groups her children were a part of, my mom had insisted we have a hobby farm. This was an ingenious decision, as the miniature farm provided a regular harvest of life lessons for me and my siblings. 

I continued. “Having lots of animals means taking care of those animals.” My son, who had been staring at his stomach (the new residence of a small bell-shaped curio), looked up with interest. I settled into my storytelling, ready to use sound effects, voice impersonations, and my mother’s misadventures to propel us through the long hospital wait.

With the help of family, my dad built a barn and a chicken coop for our hobby farm. In the winters of my youth, the chicken coop was lit by a heating lamp. A beacon of warmth in the henhouse window, its red glow could be seen from our house on winter nights as we sat around the supper table reliving the exploits of our school day and wondering who would be first to spill his or her milk all over the table. My parents’ bedroom window also faced the barn and henhouse. 

My mom is an animated dreamer and a light sleeper. For her, the line between asleep and dreaming and awake and dreaming is easily crossed. Once, she told me, she woke with a cold pack in her mouth. She’d gone to bed with the frozen beanbag on her head and then dreamed about eating a sandwich. “It was the driest sandwich I’ve ever bit into,” she said. It’s not surprising that the night she rolled over in bed and saw the red chicken house light in the window, there was no doubt in her mind that it was the blazing headlamp of a train. And clearly, that train was about to highball right through her bedroom. Grabbing my dad by the shoulders, Mom shook him awake, yelling, “Get up! GET! UP! TRAIN!!” Hats off to my dad for being able to convince her otherwise.

Lots of animals means lots of water pails. We didn’t have plumbing at the barn, so we’d fill pails with garden hoses and carry water to where the hoses didn’t reach. One day, as my mom stood amongst a snake pile of hoses and various buckets, the end of one hose became hooked inside the cuff of her blue jean pant leg. When my mom cranked the water tap on full blast, the hose she held over her bucket dripped. The garden hose snagged in her pant leg shot out cold water with fire hydrant force. As my mom yelled and jumped around trying to kick loose the garden hose, one leg of her blue jeans ballooned bigger and bigger as it filled with water. The taught water-filled pant leg tightened its grip on the garden hose. 

“Why didn’t you turn off the water?” I asked her.

She squinted at me like I was crazy. “It was really cold water! You try standing still long enough to turn off a tap when your pants are full of well water.” 

I promised to keep that in mind the next time this happened to me.

Mishaps and accidents on our hobby farm weren’t always funny. Not long after I’d married and left home, my mom was seriously injured unloading a horse from a trailer. After my mom had been treated, my husband and I drove to the hospital to pick up my parents, since they’d arrived by ambulance. I helped Mom into our car and carefully positioned her arm in an L-shape to accommodate the injured hand and cast before we headed home. Eventually, Mom asked, “Why is everyone waving at me?” I looked at her. She stared out the front passenger side window, her elbow supported by the door ledge so that her bandaged forearm stuck straight up in the window. Her fingers extended from the cast in a splayed high-five. I watched other drivers glance at my mom, her arm and hand raised in what looked like an enthusiastic wave. As they passed, the other drivers and passengers on the road that day cheerfully waved back.

As busy as she was with our hobby farm and her nursing career, my mom was always involved in the lives of her children. Especially when we were teenagers. One summer, my mom and my brother joined a drama group that would be performing at various outdoor events. The play was about a toymaker’s workshop, and the cast was a motley crew of people-size toys: teddybears, toy soldiers, dolls, clowns. Auditions were held, and parts were cast. My mom was cast as a clown. This part included a fair amount of acrobatics, a colourful costume and wig, and a lot of makeup beneath a bright red nose. Because performances were held outside and location amenities were unpredictable, my mom would don her makeup, wig, and costume before she left home. 

At the time, Mom drove a small 80s-era hatchback that we had bought used and affectionately called “the yammie.” The yammie was a stick shift and had a lot of pep — like my mom. It also had a tendency to make people carsick as it jerked to a stop or start, hiccuped through gears, and squealed around corners. On one play performance date, my mom was the designated carpool driver. Music thrumming from bass speakers added to the back window, the yammie sprinted through town. Its passengers were my brother, in a toy soldier costume, and an actress dressed as a doll. The driver, of course, was a clown. Then, as my mom made a left turn into a busy intersection, she chose the wrong lane by mistake and began driving towards oncoming vehicles. Traffic came to a sudden halt as drivers saw a little red hatchback coming straight for them. Windows down. Music loud. Life-size toys screaming in the passenger seats. A frantic rainbow-wigged clown was at the wheel, honking a horn that sounded like a squeaky toy and waving a panicked hand in the air. After looking side to side, ahead and behind several times, the clown made an on-the-spot U-turn, and the circus act sped off in the opposite direction. 

At this point, my son interrupted me. “Does Grandmom still have her clown costume?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, checking my watch. “Maybe.” A nurse was approaching, and I sighed in relief when she called our name. Then, she disappeared behind a nearby supply cart that towered ceiling high. Hidden behind the cart was an open doorway to a small auxiliary waiting room I had not realized was there. A woman accompanied the nurse as she re-emerged. They paused as we joined them.

With a big smile, the woman said to my son, “Your mom is a great storyteller.”

I peered into the hidden waiting room. There were about 10 chairs, all occupied. Rather than the worried, strained faces that were typical of hospital waiting areas, I was met with politely muffled laughter and averted eyes.

The woman turned to me. “And your mom sounds like quite a character. Someone who certainly enriches the lives around her.” 

I was startled by my unintended audience and self-conscious of my exuberant performance, but I nodded. My mom is, in my opinion, brilliant, brave, and wonderful.

“Yes,” I agreed. “She’s that kind of mom.”