Distracted By Something Shiny

A few Mother’s Day posts from me...

Mom:

You know what I was thinking about the other day? Little Thinker tapes. Who remembers these? Mom bought us a bunch. You listened along with the cassette as the narrator described the journey you were on - “Our submarine is diving down to the bottom of the ocean. What’s that we see? A shark! There are 440 different kinds of sharks. What sort of shark is this? Can you draw a picture of the shark we see?“. Then you would pause the cassette and draw a picture of the shark and then push ‘play’ when you were ready to keep going. Mom would put us at the kitchen table while she did laundry, dishes, made food. And when we were done with our pictures, before we pushed ‘play’ on our adventure, we would show her what we had drawn. It didn’t matter how terrible the drawing was, she always found something to compliment - staying inside the lines, color choices, imaginative type of shark/whatever. She would enthusiastically tell us how amazing it was and then - even though we all knew, us and her, what came next - she would ask us what would happen next on our adventure, as if she didn’t have the tape memorized by heart. That was the kind of Mom she was. And I miss her. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!


Sis:

A second Mother’s Day post from me...there was a little contest on a FB group I follow to write about your mother for Mother’s Day. Like so many on the post, I chose to write about my second mother figure. In my case, my big sister.

My sister has always been a caretaker to me. My parents told her when I was born - & she was 5yrs old - that it was her job to take care of the baby. I came home from the hospital on my third day. My parents laid me in my crib & promptly passed out with exhaustion. And then I began to cry. And cry. And cry. My sister - who had a beloved Betsy Clark doll - crept over to my crib & put her baby doll in next to me. The story goes that I immediately stopped crying. That was the first time my sister took care of me, but it was far from the last. I’m disabled & when I reached the point of needing a caregiver - 27 yrs after she gave me her baby doll - my sister didn’t hesitate to suggest we live together. And these days she’s my best friend. And that baby doll - that I dubbed DD as a toddler bc I could not say the word Baby? Well, I still sleep with her every single night. She’s on her 8th body & missing most of her hair, but she’s as much a comfort to me today as she was the day my sister gave her to me. So you see why I took this chance to write about my sister.



Me & my baby doll, DD, circa 1979.


Random internet pic of a Betsy Clark doll, showing what DD would have looked like when she started out as Sis’ doll.


This is my DD today, looking as loved as she is.


Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms, big sisters, aunts, female caregivers, foster moms, female teachers, female mentors & mother figures out there!

Today is a strange day for me. I wish I had gotten to Mom's grave, just to make it feel a little like *something*. But alas, it was too wet to be pushing my chair across the grass of a cemetery - not very accessible places, unfortunately. But in Mom's honor, I did want to post a little something. After I got my IPad - but before I got my IPencil and was still doodling with my finger - I went through a phase of drawing little tree doodles. One night, when I knew my mom had had a rough day, I doodled her a Cherry Blossom tree. She always had an affinity for them. I sent it to her and she said, "What's this for?" and I said, "For you. Just because.


Mom's Cherry Blossoms - dodger_sister

Because that's how Mom taught us to be. It didn’t have to be a special occasion for her to bring you home something or bake you something or offer to help you with something - it just had to be that she was thinking of you. That's all. I joke a lot about the things I learned and inherited from my parents being the *naughty* things, but I know, they gave me a whole lot else. So on this day, I share with you - Mom’s cherry blossom tree.

I had a really great weekend and I have pics to show you from it, but I don't have them uploaded yet. So in the meantime, I thought I'd post pics of the painting I did for my mom for Mother's Day. She is an avid collector of leaves - (and rocks and pinecones and feathers, etc) - and her decor is very nature-like, so this will go well in her house. Also, I used some glitter, cuz...glitter. And like, earlier this week, I called my mom to come over and assist me during a flare up and so she came in my room to help me and was like, "Oh, what's this painting? Did you do it? Etc..." And I was like, 'Oh shit, what do I say?' So I said, "Moooooommmmm, I need help." Which was true, but also like, oops, she is asking about her Mother's Day present! Today when I gave it to her, she said, "Well no wonder you wouldn't answer my questions about this painting! I thought you were being so rude!" Ahahaha, nope.



( Art blahblahblahing and more pics under the cut! )

Anyways, there is my painting! I knew if I didn't get it up today, it would be next Mother's Day before I remembered!

Since it’s Mother’s Day, I thought I would tell you a story about me and my mom, from when I was little. My mom is a huge Beatles fan, so like all kids when they start out listening to music, this meant I was a fan as well. So my mom started me out right at an early age. Anyway, we had to take a lot of trips to the big hospital, more than an hour away from my childhood home, to see my various specialists. My mom would play her Beatles tapes all the way there. Now neither one of us is a spectacular singer by a long-shot, but we can fake it well enough, especially when singing along with certain types of voices…like The Beatles. My mom always did pretty well with Paul McCartney. I was better at the harmony, which usually meant George Harrison, which was lucky for me since he was my favorite Beatle anyway.

So there we would be, in the car on this crappy long drive for a doctor’s visit that was going to suck for me, but these car rides always started out with my mom and me, singing along to Paul and George. And whenever John had the lead, Mom and I would trade off who sang which part. I may be biased, but we didn’t sound half bad.

Still to this day, whenever I hear a Beatles song, more often than not, I find myself singing along with all of George Harrison’s harmonies.

In other Mother’s Day news, I may have written my sister a story about her cats. Yes, yes, I did that. Pippin in particular really likes stories. It’s weird, some cats do, some don’t. Kirk could care less but Papa Bear would get all situated in bed whenever I pulled out a book from the children’s shelf of my bookcase because he knew I was going to read to him. I tell Pippin’s stories all the time and he gets so excited that he has to knead everything and put his paw on my face. For Pippin, it has to be done in this over-exaggerated tone of voice and you have to use lots of words he knows; snuggies, din-dins, Mommy, Brother, kissey-kisses (and then follow it with lots of kisses for him). So with that in mind, I may have written something called ‘Brothers in Beddy-Bye Land’ and then read it out loud to my sister and Pippin - (and Kirk, who thought he was sneakily listening from the doorway, but we caught him!). Pippin lost his little mind. Hey, he knows all those words! Those are his words! That’s his name in this story! It may be the most ridiculous thing I have ever done for her for Mother’s Day, but it was well received by all parties, indeed.