Your mother is so gay…
that during the 2008 election, she vehemently opposed Proposition 8. Seeing as Prop 8 received the vast share of its funding from the Church of the Latter Day Saints, this marked the final schism between your mother and her devoutly Mormon family still living back in Utah. Having only returned for occasional visits after graduating Cum Laude from Bryn Mawr, her complete estrangement from her parents was largely a foregone conclusion already by the time she chose to be artificially inseminated and raise a child with her longterm companion, Terry, but the fact that her own parents, she was shocked to learn, had financially contributed to the passage of legislation that would rob her of a basical civil right cured her of any lingering hope that they might yet one day come to accept her lifestyle. By the time of the 2008 election, although not yet of voting age, you accompanied your mother and Terry to every rally and action throughout California; you held protest signs aloft and chanted in unison despite not being gay yourself. However, just by dint of your presence at so many rallies, people you’d seen once or twice and recognized by face began to draw conclusions about your own burgeoning sexuality. Once or twice at each event, other young men would approach you in a manner you felt was altogether too familiar, too forward. Naturally, wanting to be accepting of others and not wanting to offend anyone, you rebuffed them as politely as possible. After the fourth consecutive weekend, however, during which you were hit on while protesting with your mother and Terry, your patience began to wear thin. Finally, after an especially hirsute man approached you and asked indelicately if you’d like to meet him post-rally for a “blowjay party” in his van, you snapped. “Fuck off, homo!” you yelled, unkindly. You threw down your sign (“Stop the H8!”) and went to look for your mother. You found her and Terry engaged in a yelling match with a small group of Mormons and you told them you’d had enough, that you were leaving and would find your own way home from Sacramento. Your mother asked what had happened, and in your anger you responded, “Why the fuck does everyone have to be so fucking gay?!” and stormed off. This hurt your mother more than you knew at the time, and even though you apologized profusely later that day, in her heart your mother had moved you silently into that category she’d reserved for her family in Utah. Things would never be the same between you again.
Your mother is so greasy…
that her doctor has been treating her for a disorder of the sebaceous glands for over 20 years. Like most teenagers she suffered from acne, but her pimples didn’t clear up as she reached the end of adolescence. Instead, the patchy colonies of acne became more pronounced and, in places, developed into painful chronic sebaceous cysts. This condition was especially bad on her upper back, shoulders, and neck, and although her face was mostly free from the cysts, she was plagued by an increasingly severe and oily acne that would eventually leave her severely pockmarked. Try as he might, your mother’s doctor could do nothing to cure her condition. Every sort of ointment, astringent, and poultice was used to no avail (this being the 1970s, oral antibiotics for acne treatment were not yet an option). So while by day at her doctor’s office your mother allowed herself to be smeared with creams, each night at home, locked in the bathroom of her parents’ house (and later, secretly late at night, in the shared bathrooms of her college dormitory) she would spend hours regarding herself in the mirror, equally repulsed and fascinated by her condition. She arranged two mirrors so that she could have an unobstructed view of the boils and cysts that dotted her back and shoulders, and when the cysts grew big and painful enough, when they became whitecapped and taut, she would arrange them between two knuckles and squeeze them, milking the hot and smelly pus from them slowly and thoroughly. Painful as it was, she was compelled to do this almost each night.
Nowadays, her acne is mostly under control. She takes Accutane twice daily and has had a series of chemical facial peels to diminish the appearance of her pockmarks. Though she’s no great beauty, now in middle age your mother has finally developed a measure of self-confidence that has been sorely lacking her entire life.
Your mother is so skinny…
that in the early 1980s she often drew comparisons to Karen Carpenter, a well-known singer who died of complications resulting from her anorexia. She wasn’t always frighteningly thin, however, but following her pregnancy with you, your mother became increasingly dissatisfied with her own body. At first she was exercising four times a week, claiming that she needed to shed the “pregnancy pounds,” but by the time you were learning to walk, she was subsisting on a handful of air-popped popcorn and two cans of Tab per day. Your mother was reasonably tall (5’8”), so when her weight dipped below 100 pounds, your father began to worry in earnest. He begged her to eat, but no amount of cajoling would convince her. You have hazy memories of walking into her bedroom, perambulation still being a novelty, and seeing your mother posing in front of the full-length mirror in her underwear, which hung off her, by then comically oversized. Her ribs protruded like a stray dog’s and her hair was thin and lusterless. Your father began cooking all your meals and you ate in virtual silence while your mother walked listlessly around the block, over and over. By the time you were in Kindergarten, she’d lost an additional 15 or so pounds and was truly skeletal. Her head looked like a rotting jack-o-lantern perched atop her emaciated frame. Her teeth were yellowed and she didn’t even have the energy to get out of bed on most days.
Your mother passed away on June 17th, 1993. Her coffin was so narrow that you could have fit two of them, side by side, in a standard grave.
Your mother is so short…
that she’s not allowed to ride any of the really good rides at Six Flags Great Adventure, where she’s taken you and your best friend Becky each summer for the past three years. Even at 11 years old, you’re both taller than she is and this summer, as you finally grow into the realization that your mother is human and subject to the same disappointments that you are, you wonder for the first time if her stature bothers her. In a somber moment of awareness, looking down from the Viking Ship that swings in a tall arc, leaving you momentarily weightless at its apex, you see her sitting on a bench as she waits with infinite patience for your turn on the ride to come to an end. Each time the ship hits its high point, you see her; she seems even smaller than usual although it may simply be your perspective. Rising and falling, again and again, you see that her diminutive height mirrors all of your own blossoming insecurities: still nascent breasts, a single crooked incisor, your complete lack of success in attracting the attention of boys. The image of your mother sitting alone on this gaudy theme park bench stays with you even as you grow older and become a mother yourself. You’re sure there’s a significance attached to it, but can’t articulate it. You’ve never told anyone about that day.
Your mother is so fat…
that last year she developed diabetes. Despite ample warnings from her doctor and pleas from you and your little sister, she continued to eat remorselessly and has scarcely left the couch in months. At first, before she became morbidly obese, she would insist that she was simply “big-boned” or had a slow metabolism, but you were there to see her polishing off box after box of Krispy Kremes that, despite your remonstrations, your neighbor would bring over. Although your mother claims that she’s planning on taking better care of herself from now on, you’re doubtful of her willpower. At night, after she thinks you and your sister have gone to bed, you hear her sobbing quietly on the couch, the volume turned down so that you can barely hear what’s happening on “COPS.” Some nights she’ll get drunk on sweet wine and call your father, whom none of you have seen in six years. You can hear her voice trembling, almost giving in to fear and panic, as she asks in vain, “I was beautiful once, wasn’t I, Gene? I was so thin. What happened?” But you know there’s no answer that he can give her that will make any of it better, or erase these past few painful years.
Also, she was recently featured on the new TLC reality series “Your Mom Is Really, Really Fat,” which premiered to above-average ratings despite low expectations from the network.
Your mother is so easy…
that she regularly makes love with your father. This happens up to three times a week, practically undiminished in frequency if not in vigor, since they were married almost 33 years ago. There was, however, a four month coital hiatus in 1989 when your mother was convinced of your father’s infidelity. As it later turned out, her fears were unfounded although your father does now admit to being somewhat emotionally distant during that time owing to a stressful season at work (as you know, he owns a landscaping company and the summer months bring in a lot of business). Once they were able to discuss these issues, their marriage was as strong as ever. You should consider yourself lucky to have been raised by two such understanding and kind people, but you’ve always wondered, given their zest for lovemaking, why you’re an only child.
(After seeing your pinched, screaming face immediately after you were born, your father took the elevator two floors up in the very same hospital and requested a vasectomy.)
Your mother is so dirty…
that it’s obvious she doesn’t shower regularly. Her hair is severely matted into a single large and ominous dreadlock that hangs down past the knees of her stained sweatpants. She hasn’t had an easy time of it these past few years since losing her job as a customer support specialist for a prominent tech company after they decided it would be better for their bottom line if her job was outsourced to India. After her unemployment benefits ran out, she subsisted for a time on her meager savings and on the increasingly rare loans from friends and now-estranged family members. After losing her studio apartment, she lived for a few months in a run-down weekly hotel and then, finally, in her car. The car, however, was eventually impounded due to thousands of dollars in unpaid parking tickets. She is not, contrary to her appearance, addicted to drugs or mentally ill. She tries to take care of herself as best she can, and manages to bathe almost weekly at one or another of the area’s Women’s Outreach shelters, but often the shelters are over-crowded and plagued with nighttime violence. As a result, she spends most nights outdoors, sleeping behind a wall of dense bramble in a small public park near the post office.
Would it kill you to go and look for her and offer some assistance or emotional support? Would it?
Your mother is so ugly…
that young children often gasp when they see her. In fact, most people are shocked by her appearance, but she wasn’t always this way. Shortly after you left for college your parents decided to do some traveling, and since your mother was always a bit adventurous their first trip was to be a South African safari. Their first few nights in Johannesburg were like a second honeymoon, and on the night of their arrival, after a four-course dinner, your parents danced slowly on the hotel’s balcony while your father placed a warm and reassuring hand on the small of your mother’s back and reminded her of his undying affection. He gave her a tasteful pendant necklace and later she cried tears of joy while they tenderly made love, certain that theirs was a blessed life. On the fourth morning they set off with three other American couples for a game preserve an hour to the south, where they hoped to spot elephants, lions, cheetahs, and rhinoceroses. Your mother spent the drive fussing over her new Canon digital SLR, with which she’d planned on shooting photos of their travels and then e-mailing the photos to you and her best friend, Helen Fielding. Shortly after arriving at the preserve, their tour guide stopped the Rover and instructed the tourists on how to quietly observe and photograph a pride of lions two dozen yards off the trail. Without warning, the dominant male lion lept at the group of Americans, and it was by sheer, dumb luck that he landed atop your mother and pulled her roughly out of the Rover. By the time the tour guide was able to shoot the lion, your mother was mauled almost beyond recognition. It was a miracle she didn’t die then and there in the bush, and she and your father were airlifted back to Johannesburg where your mother, unconscious for almost two weeks, was stabilized. Your father never left her side, and when, eventually, she was allowed to return to the United States, your father spared no expense in taking her to the world’s best neurosurgeons. Although she spent much of the intervening three years in seclusion and heavily medicated, a renowned surgeon in Portugal eventually agreed to perform an experimental facial transplant. The donor face was that of a 40 year-old school teacher from Lisbon who had hanged herself after being jilted by her fiancé, and the surgery to graft it onto your mother’s grizzly visage took a team of four surgeons almost 19 hours to complete. After a long and arduous recuperation period, your mother’s face was unbandaged and, although she remains difficult to look at, she at least now has a nose and lips again and is able to kiss you on the cheek when you visit. Your father has never left her side.
But still, she’s so ugly that there is no doubt whatsoever that she is your mother.
Your mother is so stupid…
that she had a hard time keeping up with basic math and science concepts in grade school. Whether this was due to growing up in an environment unsupportive of intellectual curiosity or a simple twist of genetic fate remains open for debate. However slow-witted your mother is, she was always very ambitious and enterprising and two short years after (barely) graduating from high school, she scraped together enough money to open a cosmetics supply store. By sheer dint of hard work and copious sacrifice, she now owns 17 stores throughout the Northern New Jersey area and is roundly considered to be a very successful businesswoman. She loves you and your sister dearly.
However, to this very day it takes her at least two hours to watch 60 Minutes.
Your mother is so hairy…
that she was very self-conscious about it all through high school and college and decided, finally, to save money for laser hair removal. After finding a competent dermatologist, she worked long hours at her unfulfilling job in order to afford the treatments, which would take place over the course of two years. After each treatment, initially for excess hair on her upper lip and forearms, she felt a bit more self-confident and smiled a bit more brightly. Her dermatologist was a kind man and very altruistic, and eventually began offering her the treatments for free. So struck was she by this display of kindness, that she fell in love with him and although a physical relationship never developed between them, she continues to think highly of the dermatologist to this day.
Also, she must certainly be of Italian ancestry.
