Mum

I looked down at my feet to the cheap Little Mermaid ball sitting there, inviting me to kick it. It wasn't one of those heavy red rubber balls you play kickball with, it was one of those $0.70 balls they keep in those tall wire racks at Target or Menards. Instead of a satisfactory fwap when struck or bounced, this kind of ball made an odd doooing. In short, it was pretty flimsy/harmless, as far as balls go. There is a slight chance that this factor crossed my slowly developing mind as I simultaneously dialed in the maximum kick velocity/trajectory and saw my mom stomp towards me with that universal "DON'T YOU DARE" expression moms get. And so, in one of those confounding choices a youth makes, I began to see my mom as more of a Pakistani civilian to the Predator Drone missile of a kick I was about to unleash on a grass stained Ariel -- collateral damage. Foot struck ball. Ariel (and maybe Sebastian, I can't remember) rose majestically as my shoulders rose not quite as majestically in another universal expression -- the cringe. The kick was perfect, my aim was true, and my mom, well, my mom just happened to get in the way. After a direct hit on her now red forehead, I knew I was in for it. But, like a dude at a baseball game about to get tasered, I resigned myself to the punishment I deserved. Oh, the things moms put up with.

This won't be a post about how tireless a job parenting is, how thankless it can all seem. It won't be as such because I cannot comprehend how difficult a job it must be. To live and die by your child's minor successes and failures. To feel the competing, sometimes tragic pull between urge to protect and the necessity of stepping back, letting your child experience failure, even if, or perhaps because that failure is preventable. To be a vigorous advocate in the face of adversity. To feel ignored when your child succeeds and blamed when they fail. A punching bag and shoulder to cry on, sometimes at the same time. I won't fully understand these emotions until I have a child of my own (Which, for the above reasons, will not be happening for a long, long time. Not Larry King long, but long all the same. Don't worry, Mom).

This is a post about how I see you, Mom.

In the beginning (but after there was light; oh, I'd say it was around 1986), you were my protector. You probably saved my ass from imminent doom more times than I can count. Because of you, I learned that streets are not for playing, sockets are not for poking, and pants are not for pooping (still working on that one...eek). I've probably said more words to you than anyone else on this planet, with the exception of chatting online during class. Hey, law school is boring! Babies may be born with some sort of rudimentary moral compass, but you were the one who gave me gentle and sometimes not-so-gentle nudges in the "right" direction. You were the infallible, permed giant of my early formative years.

Moms, and sorry Mom, you are no exception, started to lose their aura of "cool" about the time that word became the social currency during middle school. Instead of my friend and confidant, you became dispenser of Doc Martens and Old Navy cargo pants, of Mariah Carey CD's and Mighty Ducks VHS's. And yet you -- not my uncomfortable, clunky German shoes or my diva-rific music -- were the one I still ran to when a coach yelled at me or when I found out I had to go to speech class (those damned R's) or, let's face it, whenever I needed someone to help guide me through that hellish phase of adolescence.

Then came high school.

To be honest, this is more of a continuation of the grade school phase. I guess high school is when shit hits the fan and children rebel? I was probably too busy napping in the basement or going to Denny's to rebel much. What a failure! But, nonetheless, I was beginning to realize that you were cool in your own way, but definitely wasn't convinced of it. Hell, I had a hard enough time with my own conceptualization of cool (Told in excruciating detail in my high school autobiography, My Life Under the Table and Dreaming; or, When Professing One's Love for Dave Matthews Band is Not Enough for Complete Life Fulfillment (And When it Is)). And, as always, I had both feet in the present but my head stuck in my future plans: college. And while you were no longer a giant in comparison to my size (if I remember correctly, I was the giant in high school) you were still a sort of infallible wizard, albeit an uncool one in the eyes of an 18 year old. But, Gandolf and Dumbeldore aside, when are wizards ever cool? And you can't even classify them as cool cool, can you? More old person, does-whatever-they-want cool, right? Anyway, you supported my decision to journey to remote, snowy, jobless Michigan without nary a plea for me to stay closer to home. I knew I'd be back home (it only took 5 years), but I suppose you had to settle with the reality that it'd always be different. That I wouldn't be going home, but rather visiting home.

I've since come to realize, to my initial shock, that you are not the infallible titan I once thought you were -- hell, you don't even have a perm anymore! But this only makes me love you more. Because if an infallible superhero did the job you did, it'd be no big deal. Another notch on their super belt. But that you, an actual human being, flaws and all, did the job you did raising us, makes it all the more impressive. I probably owe you a lifetime of thanks, and one Hallmark holiday per year or a blog post doesn't do you justice. But thanks, Mom, I'll try to kick Little Mermaid balls at your head less often from now on.