Mamma Mia, Gloria, Happy Mother’s Day (writing to a prompt)
by Barbara Sapienza
PROMPT
“—the mother who worked from home; the mother who was creative, eccentric, brilliant, witty; the mother who never made Shake ‘n Bake or cake from a mix; the mother who’d rather let chores go undone than give up time to paint and sketch and write—that’s who I wanted to be when I grew up..” —
from “The Cadet Typwriter,” published in The Keepthings
My mother who never … My mother who … My mother who never … My mother who …. runs through my head like the childhood song, love me, love me not, love me, love me not—a game I played as a teen, as I pulled off the petals of a flower to help me decide whether my boyfriend loved me.
My mother who played piano by ear, needed no music to follow. She followed her own tune. She shuffled cards but not Tarot Cards, the ones familiar to my friends. Mum played poker and upped the ante, if not with pennies with her words.
“See me, you bustards,” she said.
If not her words, the cigarette she pointed like a dagger. She liked Chesterfields and kept a red beanbag ashtray by her side. Usually, she let the ash grow at the end of a lit cigarette and then she let it fall into the tray. No messes! She’s the mother who claimed you could eat off her floor.
My mother who told raw jokes. “Did you hear the one?” she'd say at the drop of a hat.
“The one about the guy who when he made love with his ugly girlfriend, made her cover her head in a paper bag. When she left him and met a guy who loved her and wanted to marry her, and was ready for sex, she said, “Get the bag! Get the bag!”
That was Mum’s favorite. Ha! ha! They all laughed.
My mother who could entertain a busload of friends on their yearly trip from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. She'd stand at the head of the bus, alternating the mic with my dad. They were a team with the jokes, each one outdoing the other—the tag team from hell. Relaxed by the wheels of the bus, leaving the home place, heading East for the gambling table and the slots they so loved, they were free to run the comedy show.
My mother who never read a book in her life, prided herself. She dressed to the nines and always told stories of her own father, her beloved Pa Nicola, a tailor who sewed robes for the popes. A well-dressed man, who chided his four daughters who never went to school themselves. Mum would say, “Your grandfather loved us but said we were four cuguzze.” Squashes in Italian. Then she'd laugh like a hyena.
My mother who celebrated my 50th birthday, wearing her gold lamé. As I unwrapped a present, a meditation book, Wherever You Go, There You Are, she blurted out, “Another book!” Everyone laughed.
My friend Ann said, “Gloria, everyone can't wear gold lamé like you do.”
“I tried not to think of the detritus of a mother's life laid out on a card tables for sale, and no takers,” Abigail Thomas, a memoirist, says. But here I am laying out the detritus of my mother's life— the cards she played. The tricks she made. What I take and what I leave behind.
I take her spirit. When I’m down, I hear her flippancy, her noxious comments, her vernacular unrestricted and spontaneous, utterances which often flip me back into the game. When someone is bothering me, I hear, “flick them.’’ I think she means frig them. If someone promotes themselves like they're the most beautiful bird, the most accomplished writer, the best dressed, Mum’s voice shows up. They think their shit tastes like ice cream.
Yes, my mother festers in the anal stage. I often wondered what happened to her to get her stuck there. Pardon the pun! It took me ten years of psychology school and Freud's five stages to help me understand. One of her favorite sayings exemplifies her sense of humor, her vulgarity, and her frustration.
When frustrated by demands to do yet one more thing, then another; when her hands were already filled to the brim, she'd say, Stick a broom up my ass and I'll sweep the floor.
Oh, dear Mamma has had it!
Yes, Mum was funny and vulgar—the mother who said she went to the School of Hard Knocks.
The mother who did not have children's books around the house to read to me; the mother who feared the water, bicycles, and walking in nature; the mother who forbade her children; the mother who put the fear of God in me was also the mother who created fantasies of delight—chocolate spice cookies, waffle cookies with anise seeds, almond cookies called Ricciarelli with powdered sugar on top, all manner of biscotti, twice baked; spoon out cookies with frosting and sprinkles with pink and blue sugars—red and green at Christmas. The mother who made cannoli and ricotta pie, apple and pecan pies, custard creams, eclairs with patisserie cream.
My mother who filled her house with scents of almond, vanilla, cinnamon and clove, bourbon, anise—perhaps to disguise the ugliness she was prone to, to obscure her disgust for her bodily functions. The mother who transformed distasteful parts of herself by making gingerbread houses of fantasy in the pink kitchen between puffs of smoke and sips of bourbon. She transformed the mundane into magic.
Mamma Mia, the mother who still lives inside me. The mother who will never go away.
