Some families have their own language.  Ours certainly did.

After writing this, I noticed my mother was the main disseminator of our special language and its peculiarities, but Dad had a few, too.

“Let’s go so we can come back.”  I’m not sure who coined this one, but I heard both parents say this a lot.  Mainly my dad because he never wanted to go anywhere or see anyone except us.

This was said before any family excursion or social event we had to attend.  It became a joke, and I and my siblings all use it to this day.  Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?

Dad: “Well, I’ll be go to hell!”  Said by my father whenever he was surprised or shocked by any occurrence out of the norm.

Mom:  “I think you could use a little lipstick.” – to me and my sister.  If one of my brothers had been a transvestite, she would have said it to them, too.

Dad:  Puro chiles.  His version of BS in Spanish.  Not that he didn’t use real swear words in English AND Spanish, but this was just a cute little saying that fit many situations that he thought were, well, puro chiles.

It was important to my mom that we all look good in public – AND at home.  Neither my sister nor I ever, or rarely, achieved proper status in Mom’s eyes, and it was obvious the minute you walked into the room whether you had achieved the proper look.  She, on the other hand, always looked as if she’d just stepped out of a bandbox.  Always.  Even the one time we went camping to Sequoia when I was twelve.

We were in the camp bathroom with several other moms. They marveled at how nice my mother looked – clean, perfectly coiffed.  They were all in jeans and sweats and normal camping clothes – not to mention their hair sticking up at all angles.  They asked her how she did it.  She responded modestly that she had no idea, as if it were an everyday thing.  It was, of course, but she did thrive on the compliments.

When she camped with my sister and brother-in-law many years later, there is a classic group picture. Everyone in it is a bit disheveled and dusty from their camping adventure.  Mom is sitting front and center looking beautiful…and clean…wearing her pearls in the middle of the forest.

I was always proud of her whenever she visited my elementary school.  The other kids would say to me “Your mom is so pretty.”

She often berated me for one thing or another – whether it was my look or an ability I lacked.

Mom to me:  “You should see how Victoria’s daughter irons.”  Irons?  I always fell short of her approval of how I did chores.  Her friends’ daughters could iron, cook, clean, and speak Spanish.  (That’s another story.)  They had good reason to brag.

While visiting a friend in San Francisco, I helped her fold laundry.  She marveled at how I folded her towels and tee-shirts.   She just kind of folded things in half.  I did the full Marie Kondo folding.  Mom was way ahead of Ms. Kondo, although we did not ask ourselves if the underwear made us happy.

When she saw my daughter set up the ironing board incorrectly – which means, according to Mom’s rules – she chastised me.  “I can’t believe you’ve never taught Janet how to iron!”  For the record, Janet does know how to iron.  She just doesn’t do it Mom’s way.

Worse; the time I didn’t force Janet to clean her room before Mom and Dad came for a visit from California to Arizona.  I usually broke down and did it myself after a lot of nagging.  That one time I didn’t clean it myself?  You can guess:  I was the one in trouble.

“I can’t believe you would allow her to do that.”

Here are some other common things she said to me:

Where have you been?  If you were gone more than 15 minutes, she figured you were having a clandestine meeting with a war criminal, or a MAN, or you were in jail.

“What can you possibly say (telephone call) to someone you’ve been with at school all day?”  She knew perfectly well what I was saying because she eavesdropped two to three feet away from me.

Don’t you ever learn?

Why do your children want to do things that put them in the spotlight?  This was if one of them took dance or acting class.

And when my younger daughter, Katie, had her nose pierced and my nephew, Matt, sported a tattoo, and Mom first saw them, she came unglued in the middle of her kitchen.  “Why can’t I have NORMAL grandchildren!”  I told her this was the new norm.

I was doing jumping jacks in her kitchen for the fun of it.  “Hmmm, it wouldn’t hurt you to do a few more of those.”  That was her passive aggressive way of telling me I was overweight.  Thank goodness, because I hadn’t noticed.

Once, I went with my friend, Jo, to Palm Springs to stay in her condo for the weekend.  We met at my parents’ house, and I left my car there so we could ride together in Jo’s car.

When we came back to my parents’ house late – according to Mom – on a Sunday night,   I think it was about ten o’clock, she said,

“I can’t believe two women, alone, came driving back to Ontario all that way on the freeway this late at night!”  How else would we come back – side streets for ninety miles??

“Mom, I’m sixty years old for gods’ sakes.”

As she turned on her heel to walk down the hall away from me, she said,

“Well, if you don’t care about your reputation…”

 

That was my mother.

 

The End