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Me Reflecting
My mom is 82-years-old and you would think that advanced number of years would lead me to more seriously consider the importance of a regular dialogue. You would be wrong of course if you thought that but still I try, no, not my best, I'm saving that for the day after the end of time, but I try to think of her, and I do punish myself with that wasteful emotion, guilt, and then when I'm done with all that I ring her up on the phone, feeling bad some more that it's been so long since the last call that I'm not sure my memory is getting the right area code (afterall they changed it a few years ago). But I always get it right and how I know that is when I hear my mom's unmistakable, "Hello?"
I announce myself the same everytime, "Hello mom, this is Jim Louis." I do it that way because at some point years ago I realized that just saying "Hello Mom," only gave her those two words to try and distinguish me from my four brothers, and to be fair, my one sister. I could tell those years ago that she sometimes wasn't sure who the hell I was. Why punish her that way after all the grief I provided for her over the previous twenty or thirty years. Its her golden years, try to be nice, if you can.
So yesterday I'm talking to her on the phone because it is she who called and left the message regarding the birth of my new nephew, Sam Clifford.
"It's about time this family got another Clifford," I said. (My mom's name is Clifford, and there is no family story as to why that is).
"Yeah, you think so?" she said.
"I, for one, was not going to rest until one of the Louis Baby Makers produced a 'Clifford.'"
"Well that's good, you can take a nap now," she said.
We talked some, and I pressed her for details on other family members, just in case there was anything juicey going on, but according to my defintion I would say, no, nothing really juicey, but still, some things one might consider food for thought. I told her about myself such as is pertinent to a mother, and at one point she intoned with that alarmed voice of the maternal one, and said, "What, you quit your job!!!?" And then I became impatient with her, my 82-year-old mom, and assured her I still had a nice paying job, and what I was referring to was the Rocheblave house, which is my non-paying job. I wish I could get over that childish impatience with my mother's misunderstandings which always come from that equal mixture of my mumbled speaking voice, and her less than stellar hearing ability; it feels so impure and improper to snap impatiently at one's mom. Or maybe its more accurately a boorish adult behavior I wish to abort. Hell, when I was a kid I used to get a kick out my mom's alarmism. I can remember my brothers and I would amuse ourselves with this little game: Loudly opening the back sliding glass door of the North Dallas home and using our own special intonation, to crescendo the word "Mommm!!!," which would grant us the sick pleasure of our dear mother's Pavlovian response--borne from all the years of tending to our broken bones, and sliced and punctured fingers and feet, and overall bad judgement--which would look and sound like this: her running from wherever in the house she happened to be and crying out in that voice that is only Clifford, "Whaaat, whaat, what!?!?!"
And although I know not every child is as sinister as I was, most at least go through some period where they can be only described as god awful. And so birth always amazes me, and puts me into a mode of reflection.