Yo' Momma

A little off topic, but you guys should really be checking out Fashion Kevin.

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 18:33:53 -0400

A little off topic, but you guys should really be checking out Fashion Kevin.

Your mother is so rigidly structured...

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 19:10:18 -0400

that she sometimes speaks

in Haiku which annoys you

but makes her seem smart

Your mother is so black...

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 19:08:47 -0400

that, due also in part to her very adequate grades in high school, she was awarded a $4,500 academic scholarship from the United Negro College Fund. She accepted the scholarship uneasily, but nevertheless used the money to enroll in an accounting program at a modest state school an hour upstate. She never revealed the exact details of the scholarship to her parents, mainly because your mother isn’t black. In fact, she’s white and is of European descent. No one in your family is black or has even married a black person, yet still your mother is as dark as they come.

For years after your mother’s birth your grandfather believed that your grandmother cheated on him, which unintentionally grew into a deep-seated hatred of all black people and a simmering resentment of your mother, convinced as he was that she was not his child. However, despite his faults, he was a decent man and stayed married to your grandmother and raised your mother, believing all the while that she was not his but obliged by his faith to see that she was cared for. He did, however, move into the spare bedroom at the back of the house, not speaking much to his wife when he would come home from the factory in the evenings, choosing instead to retreat to the back porch where he smoked cigarettes and stared into the encroaching darkness, praying to God for understanding and trying to find some significance in his life.

In the mid-1970s, your mother long since graduated with a degree in accounting and working as an entry-level clerk in the Macy’s head office, DNA testing took its first few tentative steps into the world. Your grandmother, hoping to finally vindicate herself and your mother in the eyes of her husband, spent an outrageous sum of money that she could scarcely afford on her typist’s wages to pay for a test. Despite your grandfathers insistence to her that the test was unnecessary, he felt in his heart that its results would only prove to the world what a decent man he had been all along, a decent man cuckolded by a lying wife.

Three weeks after both he and your mother submitted to a blood test, the results were read to them by a young doctor in a small laboratory office, where the furniture was mismatched and the carpet badly wanted replacing. The results stated conclusively that your mother was your grandfather’s daughter, and the doctor calmly went on to explain how an excess of melanin or a recessive gene or two may have been responsible for her dark pigmentation. Your grandfather felt wash over him a wave of shame at the years he’d needlessly spent in anger and resentment, and apologized to your grandmother and mother so sincerely that they instantly forgave him all those years of pain and silence. Together the three of them left the laboratory and drove home with tears running down their cheeks, glistening in the late autumn sun.

But despite your mother’s decidedly non-black ethnicity, she has an unquenchable thirst for purple drink and malt liquor. Explain that, scientists.

Your mother is so uptight...

Thu, 23 Sep 2010 01:20:32 -0400

that people routinely jest that she must have had a rod inserted in her ass. What they fail to realize, however, is how close this comes to the truth. Whenever someone mentions the proverbial rod, you fake a laugh and say apologetically, “Come on guys, she’s not that bad.” You do this to draw attention away from your own guilty countenance, your eyes cast downward, since your mother does actually have a stainless steel rod and it’s there because of you. Let’s be clear, though: it’s not up her ass; the rod was surgically grafted into the lumbar section of her spine after her back was broken in a car crash. A car crash that you caused.

It happened the same day you passed your driving test, and afterwards you begged your mom to let you drive home on the freeway. She was naturally apprehensive, you being such a new driver and also (it pained her to admit) not the smartest of her children, but you persisted (in that high-pitched wail you always use to get your way — you know what I’m talking about) until she finally gave in on the condition that you keep it under 50 miles an hour and only take the freeway for a single exit. Immediately, you swerved into traffic without checking all three mirrors. As though you’d already forgotten your driver’s ed classes, your hands were all over the wheel instead of the recommended 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock position. Other drivers honked and shook angry fists at you and your mother politely suggested that you pay more attention to what was going on around you.

Blame the exuberance of the new driver, blame the sting of her criticism, but regardless of the mitigating circumstances, at that moment you stomped down on the accelerator, a desperate gleam in your eye. A split-second later the car was upside-down on the exit shoulder. The car had only a single airbag, keeping you safe, but your mother was thrown forward with such force that when the seatbelt stopped her it broke two of her vertebrae. Before the police and ambulance arrived, you both stayed in the car, still strapped painfully in your seats, clutching hands and crying. You sobbed profuse apologies for those few minutes that seemed to you both to last for days. Your mother, though she was in great pain, told you over and over that it would be okay.

Although her injuries were minor compared to what they might have been, her specific type of spinal trauma was degenerative. After wearing a back brace for five months, she was, at first, fine. It was only after another two years that the long term affects of the injury began to show. Before long, her pain became unbearable. The only choice, Dr. Zakorsky told her, was to fuse a section of her spine via rod-insertion. Her movement would be greatly impaired (she can no longer tie her own shoes or use a standard toilet), but to be rid of the debilitating pain it was a small price to pay.

However, after the fusion she became increasinly curt in her demeanor. She began rudely interrupting people and had seemingly lost all tolerance for others. She and your father haven’t been intimate in four years (he now discreetly visits prostitutes twice a month, of which your mother is aware, which, as much as she hides it, fills her with shame and only exacerbates her bitterness toward you). To help alleviate the burden of your guilt for having caused all this, you now drink heavily in secret. It makes things bearable, but only just. Next week you’re planning on visiting your parents, but you already know what you’ll find and it fills you with despair.

Your mother is so passive-aggressive...

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 18:56:42 -0400

that she regularly leaves Post-It notes all around the house, which drives you god damn crazy. This morning, for instance, there was one above the kitchen sink (in which you’d left a single mug the night before) that read, “Do we do our dishes after we use them, or don’t we?” This one, coming hot on the heels of a note yesterday afternoon you found on the bathroom mirror that read, “Dear Melissa, I don’t like it when you squeeze your pimples on me! Clean me off! Ew!” You were livid, although weren’t sure if it was because your mother was making reference to your pimple popping or because she’d actually written the note from the point of view of a bathroom mirror.

It all began about a year ago when you inexplicably gained 25 pounds (inexplicable to her at least, but you know positively that you gained the weight out of concern for your older brother who was then still serving in the Army in Afghanistan) and your mother began to leave small notes in the refrigerator taped to the more fattening foods. These notes ran the gamut from “Ice cream is a no-no!” to “Being thin feels better than THIS tastes!” The only result these notes had was to add to your already high level of concern, which in turn caused you to eat more and gain more weight (the problem resolved itself nicely, however, once Adam finished his tour of duty and came back home safe in one piece).

Occasionally you’ll confront your mother about the passive-aggressive notes, which does little good. On those occasions, her voice turns a bit sing-songy and she becomes incredibly adept at ignoring you. She’ll usually attempt an abrupt change of topic, asking you instead if you thought a B+ average was doing your best or if it was just good enough.

You’re able to make it through the days (counting down the remaining months until you’re able to leave for college) by smoking a ridiculous amount of pot. Like, seriously, a LOT. Now you hang out with a different crowd than you used to—those kids who hang out by the river, you know, Tommy and Billy and Adele, and who you used to think all had about them a hollow, sunken-in look. Your old friends don’t hang around so much anymore, not out of concern but rather out of disdain. Lisa is going to Arizona State in the fall, and Amanda has been wait-listed at Yale. With the continued decline in your grades, you’ll have to do a semester or two at community college first before you’ll be able to transfer to a decent school. Now, is that really the best you can do? Isn’t a sense of accomplishment a better high than that dirt weed you smoke every day? Isn’t it?

Your mother is so divorced...

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 15:08:10 -0400

that she and your father no longer live together or file joint tax returns. Their marriage, never the most rock-solid or caring, teetered on the precipice of divorce for the last two years they were together, and was only sustained during that time by a fear of action, inertia, and an unwillingness by the both of them to enter into even the most basic of discussions. As a young child, you would sit with your little brother in the room you two shared with the lights turned off while listening to your parents argue. Your brother, even more frightened of these scenes than you were, would sob quietly as you told him—without believing it yourself—that things were sure to be all right, and all the while your father would drink and throw things while your mother shrieked, harpy-like, barely coherent. Finally, your father moved out (for a time he lived in a terrible motel near the interstate on-ramp called The Bungalow) and divorce soon followed. Your mother was awarded sole custody after her lawyer insisted that you and your brother testify before a judge that your father beat you (which, technically, he didn’t; he hit you only once, and afterward felt such remorse that he sat on the porch crying for hours), which you did, but as you said it you caught momentary sight of your father, whom you were trying desperately to avoid looking at, and the look on his face caused you to cry and wail uncontrollably, which the judge mistook for a welling-up of repressed emotion that indicated how severely your father did indeed beat you.

Shortly after the divorce your father sent a letter to the house that your mother read aloud to you in the kitchen. He was moving on, it read, since he wasn’t yet so old that he couldn’t make a clean start of it. He’d be moving west, to San Diego, where he planned on opening a restaurant with an old navy friend. He wished you all luck, he wrote, and eventual happiness, since he’d managed to let go of his anger and feelings of betrayal. And while their union had never been good, these wistful words put your mother into a state of extreme melancholy. She went several days with a sour film wrapped around her heart, feeling nostalgic for the few times she and your father had been happy together, trying to forget the years of neglect and accusation. On the third day after reading the letter, worn out from work and weighed down by the lingering depression, your mother went to bed and developed a fever. During the night she slipped in and out of consciousness and yet, when she recalled it later, she was beset by vivid and affecting dreams of colors and light. Something took hold of her during the night, a flood of emotion or perhaps some foreign spirit, and she saw its inky fingers wrapped around her insides, squeezing her, robbing her of breath. After what seemed like hours, the awoke with a start. It was still nighttime, the room dark as a bible, and her fever had broken. The sheets were soaked through with your mother’s sweat, her nightclothes clinging wetly to her body, and wet strands of hair plastered across her face. And with the dissipation of the fever, the fist, the sour film, those inky fingers that had squeezed her heart and pulled her face into a grimace, the regret she could not let go of, all fell away.

She blindly fumbled to open a window, and as her sweat dried in the slight breeze she felt that she would be all right. Her heart felt free and untarnished, and in the morning she would wake you and your brother with a kiss on the forehead. She will have already made a big breakfast and called your school to tell them you’d be taking a sick day. The three of you would spend the day watching Pink Panther movies and laughing, eating popcorn with too much butter on it, and that night, although you didn’t know it—wouldn’t know it for days—your father would be killed driving across the vast plain of America, a small, glowing ember on route 80, screaming westward and dreaming of a new life, when he fell asleep for just a moment.

Your mother is so French...

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 15:55:38 -0400

that when you were younger she insisted that you call her “maman.” The strange thing is, is that she’s not even really French. Her Francophilia began early on in high school when she became infatuated with Serge Gainsbourg and the French New Wave. She began affecting a slight French accent, which at first people thought of as slightly odd yet charming, but quickly became boring and pretentious. However, your mother never noticed the disapproval of others, or if she did she remained unconcerned. In fact, it may well have been this very disapproval that sent her ever more deeply into her love of all things French. She was simply too cosmopolitan, too avant garde, for Rochester, New York, and in her senior year she chose to study abroad in France. After a tearful farewell from your grandmother, your mother boarded a Pan Am flight bound for the City of Light: Paris! During the flight, she was so giddy she could hardly sit still and she plied the young stewardesses with questions about the Left Bank and the Champs Elysees. They took turns crouching next to her coach class seat to tell her about the nightclubs and discotheques that dotted nighttime Paris like glowing embers, calling out to the young and adventurous. They dreamily recounted stolen kisses and romantic views of the Seine from the ponts. Your mother swooned when they described Mont Martre and Ile de la Cite, dreaming all the while of a dark-eyed Frenchman to walk with her arm in arm down the narrow streets.

Hours later, when the plane arrived at Charles deGaulle airport, your mother was met just past customs by her host family, a slightly overweight yet cheerful couple and their 12-year old son. They drove with your mother not to Paris or even the outlying suburbs, but to Chartres, where she spent the next four months walking by herself to and from a small school house. The lessons were dreary and her host family forbade her from making the trip to Paris. Her only solace came at night when she would stare for hours out her second story window at the glowing image of the cathedral, one of the great wonders of European architecture. On weekends, when her chores and schoolwork were finished, your mother would walk to the cathedral and wander among the throngs of tourists. She never spoke with anyone, not wanting to reveal herself as an American. Hours later she would walk back to the modest house of the host family, but backwards, slowly backwards, always with an eye on the spires of the cathedral, careful not to trip over anything, hoping for something to happen, something she might one day tell her children about, anything.

Your mother is so poor...

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 20:06:00 -0400

that during a six month period when you and your sister were in middle school and your father had lost his job at the Pepsi bottling plant she would eat a modest lunch alone at the Sizzler. She wore a long coat with many large pockets, and in each pocket she kept a one quart Ziploc bag that she surreptitiously filled with each pass of the buffet line and later served to you at home. She did this three times each week, thinking that this was all she could reasonably expect to get away with without being discovered by the Sizzler’s manager, who was by all accounts a total hard ass. After she ate, your mother would return home and plate the food she’d secreted and serve it, never revealing how she’d come by it. Your father didn’t know about her trips to the buffet, and thought only that your mother was very adept at stretching his paltry unemployment checks. One night while the four of you ate dinner, your sister absently complained about having to eat macaroni & cheese and Texas toast for dinner twice in a single week, and this set your mother off. Living under the strain not only of raising the two of you but also having an unemployed husband and working a job herself (two days a week at the office of the registrar at the state university), she finally broke down. In a momentary display of fury under the cheap yellow light of the single 60 watt bulb hanging above the table, she upended her dinner plate, sending it to the floor with a wet thud. She regained her composure and walked quickly out of the room, followed by your father’s ignorant rebuke of, “Dammit, Sheila!” It was easy to see how much this upset your sister, and she instantly regretted her complaint, but you were compelled to be indignant and point out her misstep. Later that night you accosted her in the den, saying, “Look what you did, retard.” At that, feeling her guilt acutely, your sister burst into tears and ran out of the room and through the swinging door into the kitchen. You watched her leave, and as the door swung back outwards you caught a glimpse of your mother, who’d been sitting by herself in the room. The look on her face told you in an instant that she’d overheard your casual display of cruelty. She’d already put the episode behind her and was figuring out how best to console your sister, but now she simply sat there and wondered at the pettiness of your actions.

She didn’t speak to you at all for the remainder of the night, but the next day, as though to make up for the whole episode, she returned from the Sizzler with two pocketfuls of prime rib, which she then served on her finest china, complete with sprigs of parsley. Although your parents and sister talked animatedly while they ate, you cleaned your plate in silence, wondering how best to make amends. You were wondering still when your mother brought out three bowls of melted soft-serve ice cream, rainbow sprinkles floating in the liquid like the remnants of breakfast cereal.

Your mother is so lame...

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 12:33:12 -0400

that she obviously doesn’t understand you at all. I mean, it’s not like you’re six years old anymore or anything. Yet she still insists on treating you like a child and not a capable and autonomous human being. Come on, right? It’s so lame how just because of that one time in 7th grade when you happened to mention that robots were rad that she still now to this day always gets you robot-themed birthday presents and leaves newspaper clippings about robots on the kithen counter for you to find. You’ve grown as a person and have diverse and mature interests, how difficult can that be to comprehend? What is she, an idiot? You’re on the lacrosse team, for Christ’s sake! You have a girlfriend! Enough already with the fucking robots! And it’s not like your dad is any help at all, wrapped up as he is with his woodworking in the garage. I mean, geez, he hardly comes in to dinner anymore and so most nights it’s just the two of you, you and your mother, sitting there quietly eating the nutritious yet tasty meal she’s spent two hours preparing. And for a while, all you can hear are the sounds of your combined mastication, interrupted by short, whining bursts from your father’s table saw or lathe. Finally, over desert, your mother will mention something to you about how she can’t wait until you invent her a robot to help with all the housework and then she laughs a little, but her laughter is tired and thin. You’ll exhale forcefully, disapprovingly, and scrape your knife across the china and, finally, your mother will get it. She’ll look up at you and wonder where her sweet boy went, her young son, and, in fact, her husband, her family. How did it end up this way? she’ll ask quietly, as if not wanting to bother you with it. She’ll look outside through the large bay window in the dining room and see the indifferent wind blow a solitary piece of newspaper down the street and across the subdivision. In the garage your father fires up his router. No one says anything for a long while, you just sit there as the last few string beans grow cold on your plate.

Your mother is so tall...

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 19:59:00 -0400

that as a young girl she was frequently teased by other children at school. They’d engage wantonly in every cruel impulse, calling her names and manufacturing any pretense to ostracize her. In the afternoons, she’d walk home alone, eyes cast downward, and disappear into her bedroom to read until your grandmother called her down to supper. But let’s also admit that she was indeed exceptionally tall. By the time she started 7th grade she was almost 6 feet tall, and she towered over all the other students in her small, Midwestern middle school—boys included. She politely declined when the girls’ basketball coach, Coach Pedersen, begged her to play varsity ball, preferring instead to gracefully bear the insults of her classmates and spend her afternoons reading in solitude. Her remarkable height was compounded by her rail-thin frame and lack of any noticeable breasts. Your grandparents worried themselves sick that the teasing she was enduring would wreak emotional havoc on her, but deep down your mother was uneffected. Three weeks before the start of 10th grade, eight days after her 15th birthday, your mother was out shopping with her parents when a modeling scout approached her and asked if she would mind posing for a photo. Your mother demurely complied and two months later she and your grandmother were flown to Chicago in order to take test shots. A week after that, she was cast in a fashion shoot for Halston in Vogue. This being the mid-1970s, tall and thin models were just coming into style and your mother’s unique looks made her an instant hit in magazines and on runways, and in short order she became one of the world’s highest paid fashion models. Never one to rely solely on her looks, though, your mother insisted on obtaining a college degree and in only three years she graduated from NYU with honors with a BA in comparative literature. She continued to model for several years, but gracefully bowed out of the profession once she entered her early 30s. With the money she’d saved, your mother returned to school and earned a masters degree and eventually a pHD. Today, she’s a distinguished professor of humanities at a small liberal arts college in New England. She’s widely esteemed by her colleagues and publishes regularly.

You respect her very much and want only to make her proud of you.

Your mother is so gay...

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 19:06:00 -0400

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...

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 12:33:33 -0400

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...

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 15:11:41 -0400

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...

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 19:09:18 -0400

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...

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 18:17:49 -0400

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...

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 15:17:29 -0400

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...

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 14:41:23 -0400

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...

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 02:20:00 -0400

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...

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 19:03:29 -0400

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...

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 18:46:00 -0400

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.