Happy Mother's Day
Big ups to all of the mothers out there, well, at least the ones that are working hard to raise good, strong families. And extra props to the Bomb Moms (a term Dirty Jase and I coined, sort of pre-MILF) everywhere.
I am still moderately surprised at how weird/sometimes difficult Mother’s Day can be. You would think I would be over it by now. It’s been 16 years and it’s not any better at age 37 than it was at age 21 (which, by the way, is not the best age to lose a parent. Hi, drinking problem. You and I are going to be friends for a while. Watch, as we alienate and worry pretty much everyone close to us.). But, The Chicken will not mope about it, and certainly not here in the Coop. Rather, I would like to share with you a story, one that continually pops up in the DVD player in my head, when I think of ma.
I had to have been about 12 or 13, still just a child if you think about it. My sister had dated a series of losers and low-grade speed pushers, but had landed a nice guy named Dale, who had a kickass pickup truck and played drums in a cover band. Surprisingly, my parents liked him, which meant I liked him. I liked everything my dad liked (boxing, the Lions, Kraft caramel cubes) and mirrored his displeasures as well (Jews, blacks, traffic jams). Dale had a real pearl of a bike, a Schwinn Le Tour,
the fucking Maserati of 10-speeds among the Journey-listening, iron-on T-shirt transfer wearing set. At the house one evening, I asked if I could ride it up to Carroll Park to watch one of the baseball games up there. No problem, son. Have at it.
Imagine the horror when I returned an hour later, crying, on foot, freaked out because the bike was stolen. I saw the guy take off on it, but he was gone so fast, I didn’t stand a chance. Plus, he was really scary looking and old, like 20. I come home a blubbering mess and my mom, while offering a little consolation immediately gets pissed and makes me get in the car. We are apparently on the hunt for the perpetrator. Even my young mind at that age knows there is no way you’re going to find this guy. He could be anywhere, quite possibly fleeing in any direction. So, we start driving. And she’s not saying a word. I don’t think she’s so much pissed at me, but her focus was, well, obvious. Imagine an intensity that is part Ray Lewis, part Henry Rollins. About 8 blocks into our drive, I see the guy walking down the sidewalk in a direction opposite of ours.
“Is that him?” she asked.
“I think so,” I said. “Yes, it is. It’s him.
The guy looked like Ron Jeremy in a tight AC/DC T-shirt, which was especially disappointing because I really liked that band a lot at that age. Imagine the naiveté. People in AC/DC T-shirts should not be stealing bikes, dude. We like the same band, OK? Later in life, as a journalist, I would learn that people in AC/DC T-shirts would snort a fistful of Comet and fuck a corpse in the ass, when presented with such a plum of an opportunity. So, dude is just walking down the street, minding his own business, when my mom rolls up in the LeSabre, leans out the window, points at him and yells “Where’s the bike?!?!”
Playing the ultimate liar’s card, the guy does the ol’ “What?” complete with shoulder shrug and palms out, upturned. What happened next is forever branded on the mental highlight reel.
“Don’t lie to me you sonofabitch!! Where’s the bike!!?” Her finger is shaking at this guy from the car. He bolts and starts running. She whips in reverse and is chasing this guy, who is on foot, while we drive. He dodges in between some houses, across a couple of blocks, and she’s hot on his trail, left, right, right again. We can see Mr. Tight Jeans navigating a set of stairs on the exterior of a residential dwelling, one of those straight-up, 50-count steps stuck on the side of an apartment building, often leading to a second-floor unit. She parks in the driveway, orders me out of the car, and starts up the steps, stopping at the screen door. She whips it open and walks right in the kitchen, and there, in that room, are three other men. These fucking guys look like, I don’t know, at my age, they looked like a cross between a couple of broken Hell’s Angels and the dudes from Corrosion of Conformity. And there, in the kitchen, leaning up against the wall, is the bike.
“That your bike?” my mom asks one of them.
“Naw lady, ain’t mine. I don’t know where it came from.”
“It came from me,” she says, “yanking it away from anywhere near these guys, “and I’m taking the fucking thing with me.”
Down the steps, into the car, and back home with the formerly stolen goods. Dale got his bike back and I got to see my mom as this incredible bad-ass, this person who would stand up to anybody. People say that a lot. You have to stand up for what you believe in, etc. Whatever. Not a lot of people follow up on it. Those guys in that kitchen could’ve kicked her ass and mine, all over that apartment and down those steps if they wanted to. Chances are, they were just some small-time shitheads, but to me, they looked ruthless and dangerous. I’m assuming she saw right through them.
What I always take from this memory is this: My mother had no intent of paying to replace Dale’s bike. Not when you’re working 40 hours, paying two mortgages, two cars and have five kids. No. Fucking. Way. Three-hundred bucks? This week? Nuh-uh. So she tracked this dick down and stood up to his boys, on their turf. I didn’t understand it then, but I do now, now that I work for a living, now that stakes are higher when it comes to finances, now that I know what an unexpected, out-of-nowhere assault on your pocketbook can do to you, how it can fuck you up for a little while, depending on your situation.
During the episode and forever after, I saw my mother as powerful and fearless. I never saw my mother scared. Not once. I witnessed her in situations of discomfort (like driving up north at night and my dad kills the headlights on a dirt road; she didn’t like that shit at all), but I never saw her scared or vulnerable. Now, there is a trait to pass on to your kids.
