Mother’s Day: A Rookerville Collection

Mother’s Day: A Rookerville Collection

ME Mom outline

A bunch of us wanted to share some quick thoughts pertaining to Mother’s Day.  Below is a collection from a few writers:

Andrew Rose:

My mom’s family is 100% Italian-Catholic from the Bronx, and my upbringing reflected this strongly. Dinner was pasta multiple times a week. Misbehavior led to a wooden spoon. Parent-child communication meant gesticulating wildly with your hands while yelling rapid-fire sentences at one another, and regardless of what you were about to do, you were definitely going to break your neck. That caffeinated brown liquid you drink in the morning? KWAW-fee. The place where your socks go? DRAW-ah. Silence was meant for church, and otherwise, ALL SYSTEMS GO. The first few times my then-girlfriend-now-wife heard me on the phone with my mother, she thought we were constantly fighting. No, I assured her, this is just how we talk. Sorry, tAWK. As the oldest son and grandson in the family, my mom’s devotion to me also likely set totally unrealistic expectations for my future relationships with women. Alas, no one will ever put me on a pedestal quite like she does, but the skinny, blonde, very-not-Italian girl I married fits the bill well enough.

A few years ago, my mom’s mother passed away, and the family did not react well, to put it lightly. My grandmother was probably the strongest person I’ve ever known, and how she managed to keep her family afloat with a deceased husband prior to any of her four children being old enough to drive is beyond me. She was the bond that held them all together. I joke with my mom sometimes about how alike the two of them are becoming, mostly because they are both slightly insane. But besides the tangential monologues and constant fretting, their strength and dedication the familial unit in all situations, at all costs, solidifies their similarity. And really, that’s all you can ask.

Happy Mother’s Day to the woman who holds it all together.

Scott Signorino:

Mother’s Day has always been a bittersweet holiday at the Signorino castle.  My mom, like everyone else’s mom, is the greatest mom on earth.  She’s a hardworking, straight-forward woman who does her best to understand her right-brained only child which is a pretty tall order to fill considering my mom is a Happy Days-era Jersey girl from a family of six.  My mom’s a waitress and sometimes a bartender and so Mother’s Day takes on a different meaning for her than just flowers and a brunch paid for by dad and Scott.  My mom works at a fine dining restaurant a few miles outside of Doylestown where I grew up and her knack at interpersonal communication has caused her to befriend politicians, lawyers, judges, the guy who now fixes all of our family cars, people who have given me job interviews, and an automotive baron who owns about 75% of all of the businesses in Doylestown.  This same knack has caused her to be a stellar waitress and sometimes-bartender and she essentially makes it rain when it comes to tips on Mother’s Day, the busiest restaurant day of the year.  So while I’ll be dragging myself out of bed this Sunday morning and schlepping it to Doylestown from Center City on the long and tortuous R5 line, my mom will have been at work for about four hours of a ten hour day.  She’ll get home in her uniform around 6:30, we’ll have family dinner, she’ll try to give me part of the money she made that day, I’ll give her some flowers I bought at Acme and a funny card with some smart ass remark I wrote in it and then I’ll head home and my mom will go to bed.  I don’t think I can give my mom the credit she deserves on Mother’s Day because she won’t give it to herself.  She’s held two jobs until I was 28, one always being at a restaurant, and when she retired from corporate accounting, she’s continued and she’s now 64 years old. My mom doesn’t get a break on Mother’s Day because she wants to do right by us like she always does.  Mom – I know you read Rookerville and I want you to know that I love you and you’re the most important woman in my life and I wouldn’t have the same work ethic or ambition or ability to talk to people I didn’t know that well if it weren’t for what you’ve passed on to me.  Happy Mother’s Day, I hope you make it rain one more time.

Russ Stevens:

My first memories begin around 3-4 when I was in pre-K, a year early.  At the end of the school year, I said “Mommy I need a break” (because my life was SO hard) and my mother obliged.  For the next full year, I got to spend every single day with my mom.  My routine was so specific, that I still remember it.  Dunkin Donuts, where I’d get a donut and sneak some of my mom’s coffee.  I never liked it, but I always hoped one day I would.  I got to go the park every day, and then come home to watch Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers and be read to before naptime.  Eventually, I got so tired of having to wait for my reading time that I started to pretend to read by myself.   My mom seeing this, and knowing her older son hated reading, spent as much time as possible helping me learn to read.  By the next year, I was the age I should be in kindergarten, and I was the only kid in the class who was already reading chapter books.

I guess my point is this:  I became an English and Philosophy major down the road and to this day and it feels as though reading is and will always be my first love.  This is what makes moms awesome.  They are there with you from day one, helping you learn and grow and figure out the person you are going to be.  I cannot say for sure if I would be the person I am today without her care.  Even as you get older and sometimes dread the phone call you might have to make because she may have an opinion about what are/are not doing, remember that she really only ever wanted you to be the best person you could be. Relax. And say I love you.

Jennifer O’Connell:

When I look back on pieces I’ve written, I find all sorts of topics.  African leg infections.  Motorcycle marriage proposals.  Aboriginal bachelor pads.  Whitney Houston flashmobs.  Shiny spandex adventure pants.  Falling in love and out of planes, narrow escapes and near misses, eating tarantulas, fleeing venomous snakes, wrangling llamas.  Adventures, misadventures, personal illuminations…they’re all there, save one topic: my mother.

 

I don’t know why it is so hard to put her on paper.  Fed up with trying to do it myself, I’ve resorted to someone else’s words.  It’s the week before Mothers’ Day and I’m standing in a supermarket leafing through stacks of greeting cards, trying to find one that resonates with what I want to say.  What do you say to a woman who is everywhere at once?  I can pick out small things I love about her: the way she throws her head back and laughs a little too loudly, corny puns, apple coffee cake, weathered hands, her favorite hue of indigo.  She is modest, except for when it comes to command of the English language or her aim with a frisbee.  At the family reunion last summer we were all telling stories, singing songs, showing off talents.  “What can you do?” we asked my mother.  “I do a damn good impersonation of bacon,” she said.

 

I heard a saying once: “there are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle, or the mirror that reflects it.”  I can’t put my mother into words, because she is in everything I do.  She is in every adventure and misadventure; she is in all that I am.  I sigh my defeat to Hallmark and turn and walk away.  I know that soon we will sit on the deck in the fading dusk, watching the mountains, saying more through our silence than we could with all of the words in the world.

Matt Cargile:

The ability to amaze someone by just being normal is a luxury not everyone has.  And even those who do have it don’t really get it with everyone they interact with.  I’m one of the lucky few, but it’s really only with my mother.  See for her I’m a miracle child; so strange how someone can have such a different point of view for your personal development. In my looks back at growing up I have some realizations.  1) even if I was right about grades really not being a sign of intelligence, I could’ve put a little extra effort in and gotten A’s.  2) Picking a college on a whim isn’t the best move.  Especially if you don’t even know the college and only went to check it out when it visited your High School cause it got you out of AP Physics. 3) Just cause you can film a party you threw at your house while your parents were away, doesn’t mean you should.  But if you asked my mom she’d exclaim that 1) it’s amazing I even graduated high school (not like I was a bad kid, but literally miracle baby amazing), 2) Best college choice ever, and she tells everyone else’s kid they should go there too, 3) she’s keeping the tape for when I run for president (which I’m never doing).  See my mom dealt with me nearly dying a couple times after being born.  This is a very interesting time for such dramatic occurrences cause it’s literally like it never happened to me.  So while I grew up, driving like an idiot, doing stupid stunts on my bike, and just floating through school my mom was busy being amazed I didn’t have brain damage.  Amazed I could even talk like a normal person.  In the end I didn’t need to do much to impress my mom, but in her eyes I’ve exceeded all expectations and then some.  For what’s it worth I just did my best to listen to my parents and that seemed to get me pretty far. And now my mother is always praising the skies for gifting me to her, which is a nice sentiment but if I could tell her one thing is that maybe she should thank herself a bit more for who I am.  I know I do.

Jake Serlan:

The angriest I was ever at my Mother occurred six time zones away from her. I was abroad for college, living off an unsubsidized loan paying for six credits I didn’t more than I needed to graduate. But, the girlfriend said she wanted to go to London and wouldn’t go with me. So, there I was.

I was reminded of all these facts by Mom’s delayed shrill through my English style Nokia that still played the Nokia ring tone. ‘Wasted money’ this, she said and ‘squandered time’ that. “My life is mine” I said or something equally teenagery despite being in my early twenties. At some point, I started yelling. I think I did anyway, cause she asked “why are you yelling” in that Motherly way that knows why your yelling and her mission was accomplished.

By the time I hung up on her my face was beet red and I was sweating. I had found my way to the bathroom some how and my girlfriend looked in on me with concern.

“Please come out of the bathroom,” she said.

“Why?!?!”

“Because you’re about to punch the mirror.”

When I looked into the mirror, I was greet by a man who looked just like me, only with his fist cocked back, loaded for a knock out blow.

“Oh.” I said.

I’m not prone outbreaks of anger, much less violence. It took me a long time to realize how I got to that point.

My mom never got mad. She was disappointed.

And she was the one person I never wanted to disappoint.

I would discover as I got older that I couldn’t disappoint her. Not really. Even if she didn’t agree with me or I her, she encouraged my convictions. I would never have gotten the nerve up to raise my fist to the mirror if she hadn’t instilled my sense of indignation, and I wouldn’t have been able to resist throwing the punch without her ability to judge a situation in a second.

My passion comes from my Mom. And I love her for it.

 

Justine Kolsky:

 

How do you purchase a gift of appreciation for the person who literally brought you into this world? You can’t. Well technically you can but, the flowers you’ve sent, the Spa day you’ve purchased, or the nice lunch you’ve planned doesn’t compare to the LIFE that she has given you. In most cases, your mom sacrificed her killer body for 9 months to give you a nice little space to grow in.  How selfless is that? Most people are thinking “well it’s not selfless she wanted children” and to you I say, are you serious? Yes, some people plan pregnancy but for MOST, it just happens. So before you start to think you’re the best gift your parents have ever received, think again. A mother is the best gift we all have received in one-way or another (biological or not).

 

Cyn (aka Mom) is not your average mother and that’s what I appreciate about her so much. She has no issue with confidence and plays the part of detective, doctor, dancer, banker, and weather(wo)man without hesitation. To be clear, professionally, she is none of these things but does a damn good job pretending she is. To be honest, I don’t know how Cyn has made it this long without murdering me. I am the reason why I don’t want to have children. I was the worst child up until about a year ago and Cyn put up with all of it without batting an eye. That’s how Moms are. They are there for you unconditionally, regardless of the situation.

 

Mom-

Thank you for calming me down when I was having temper tantrums, staying by my side all night when I burnt my hands on the radiator at that restaurant, letting me cut my hair however I wanted to (even though I looked like a boy), allowing me to take the car on my first day getting my license, not getting that mad when I crashed it, picking me up at 2am from a sleepovers because I missed you too much, carting me around until I was 16, laughing it off when I call you a bitch or moon you after dinner as a “thank you”, introducing me to chocolate, introducing me to old movies, always making me aware of the dangers of wherever I’m living at the time, calling everyday just to say “hi”, being brutally honest, and putting up with all of my bullshit. Sorry I couldn’t be home today to celebrate with you but hopefully this will suffice for now. Cheers to you Ma! Keep dancing, humming, cracking cases, and running the hospital – enjoy today, I love you.

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