"I'll Scratch Their Eyes Out!"

During childhood, I remember my mom as being the kindest, sweetest, most loving mother in the world. I suppose most of us do (excluding some horror film serial killers or maybe Joan Crawford's daughter). But my mom had one simple tear in the fabric. When she turned "Dark Mom," it was terrifying!

No, I'm not talking about when she'd try and "spank" my brother and I. Actually, we hoped for that because she pulled her punches and cried more than our crocodile tears. (It was a much better fate than awaiting the flying, fiercely flailing hand {or belt} of my dad. I'm pretty sure Ward Cleaver took after the Beaver with the metal end of a belt, too, but that footage was cut from TV.)

There was one trigger--only one--that would morph my June Cleaveresque ray of sunshine mom into Dark Mom: when my mom "perceived" other adults--mostly teachers--as abusing her poor lil' innocent (*Cough!*) angel children. (And make no doubt about it, my brother and I genuinely deserved the teachers' wrath, at least 9 times out of 10, but that's hardly the point, right?). When Mom was triggered, brimstone lit up her eyes. Smoke roiled out of her nose. Her rosy complexion burned into a Devil's red. Hands gripped the steering wheel until knuckles turned bone white and I swear--no, I SWAN--claws began to grow from her fingernails.

But it was what she said that terrified me the most. "I'm gonna go scratch her eyes out!!!"

Yow!

First of all, the imagery, oh, the imagery. I vividly imagined Mom going up to my fourth grade teacher and stabbing her long nails into Miss Billyous's eyes, plunging them in again and again, while all sorts of viscera slung across the chalkboard and splattered my fellow students. She'd finish with two runny egg-like eyeballs impaled upon both index fingernails. All the time during this horrendous vision, she was hysterically tittering and laughing like the Wicked Witch of the West. Our namesake after all.

And poor Miss Billyou's crime against humanity? She dared to tell the class, "Well, by now, I'm sure all of you know that Santa Claus isn't real. It's your parents." (Side bar, your honor: To be honest, I was in the Santa doubting stage at that time, kinda wanting to hold onto the magic, the myth. But deep down, the logistics of it all didn't quite add up. I believe my fellow students had already bypassed that stage and nodded enthusiastically with Miss Billyous's whistle-blowing, to which I joined along, not to be labeled a pariah. Not like poor Roger Danton, who was audibly shocked and ridiculed because of it.)

So when my mom picked me up from school, I made the mistake of telling her about this. At the time, I believed I was being clever, trying to coerce a confession out of her, demanding an explanation why she'd lied to me all those years. After everything we'd been through together. So much for truth being the best policy and all that crap.

But something unexpected happened, she turned into Dark Mom. Immediately I knew I'd made a big mistake. 

"I'm going to go scratch her eyes out!" she shouted.

She zipped the car back into the parking lot, squealing the tires and making the scrambling kiddies squeal. In the backseat, I was hysterical. I didn't want Miss Billyous's eyes to get scratched out. I kinda liked Miss Billyous. Also, I didn't want my mom to be a prison lifer. Who'd make my sammitches? And I suppose part of me didn't want to have to deal with the humiliation of being the only student whose mother scratched the eyes out of their teacher.

"Please, Mom, don't do it! PLEEEEEESE! OH, NOOOOOOOO! She didn't mean it! I'll DO ANYTHING! PLEEEEEEEE..." I'm screaming and crying and I think I even threw my arms around my mom's neck to keep her from scratching out my teacher's eyes. My younger brother beside me had no idea what was going on, nor did he have a reason to join in the caterwauling, but he did, sensing trauma like a dog.

Thank God my mom finally relented. She huffed her way back to the mommy we knew and loved, almost shrinking with each loud exhalation huffed through her nose. "Fine," she finally said. "But she'd better not cross my path!"

So...if not a complete win, at least a stay of execution.

Now, I believe this trauma had been blown way out of proportion in my work-in-progress brain by a late night viewing my mom and I shared several weeks prior. It was something we enjoyed doing together on Saturday nights. She'd let me stay up with her for the 10:30 movie, we'd (she'd) cook popcorn and I can firmly nail this ritual down as the beginning of my love for movies.

Not that time, though. It was Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. The one where Suzanne Pleshette's eyes were pecked out by birds. EEEEEEEEEEEEEE! For years, I vividly remembered the quick shot, Suzanne's eyes all bloodied with gunk oozing out and splayed all across her teacher's blouse. (Of course, upon revisiting the film, my faulty childhood memory had the wrong character getting their eyes pecked out; I also remember thinking, "But...but...the movie didn't have an ending! What a rook!")

Anyway, I didn't want Miss Billyous ending up like a similar teacher with a similar fate, Suzanne Pleshette.

Well, that was the first Dark Mom transformation I recalled. There were many more after that. And each time, they became less and less traumatic. Near the end, I'd just roll my eyes and "whatever" her.

Now, the incident I just cited was a rarity. As I'd noted earlier, most times my brother and I came face to face with the misdirected wrath of Dark Mom, we usually deserved the teacher's punishment. We WERE brats. 

Case in point, my seventh grade art teacher banned me to sit in the hallway several days. My mom, upon hearing this, went Dark. She said, "I'll scratch her eyes out! She's just jealous of your art skills!" Well...no. Granted I was a good artist and granted, the teacher did dislike me. But she had good reason, too. I was the agent provocateur in that class and led about eight students into misbehaving along with me, their Don of Delinquency. When the teacher would go into the mysterious back supply closet, I had them all throwing yarn up and around the lights. It was a beautiful sight to behold. And Boom! I was sentenced to the hallway. Got an "F" for my troubles, too. Well deserved and bravo, old chap, an education utilized wisely!

So, I had to talk my mom out of scratching the teacher's eyes out. Not that I really thought she'd do it, mind you--not in the wise, experienced, mature mind of a seventh grader--but rather, I didn't want to go through the embarrassment of "Mommy yelling at teacher." I had street cred to maintain.

Wrapping this sermon up, I suppose if Mom morphed into Dark Mom, I, too, had a secret identity: Dark Pre-Teen.

Now that I've laid down just a taste of the kinda kid I was (just a taste, mind you), some of my *good* teenage years behavior can be found in my first book, Tex, The Witch Boy (republished recently by The Wild Rose Press). It's not all me, natch. I wasn't a witch, nor did I tackle murders, but a lot of the bullying and other incidents actually happened to me or a friend. (Ahem, artistic license is taken. I wasn't exactly a complete angel in high school, either. But those incidents are for another series...) That's Tex, the Witch Boy! Get it before all the copies magically go *POOF!*

Goodbye, Mom

After a long and emotionally grueling two-and-a-half weeks, my family and I said our final goodbyes to my mom today. Long-time blog readers will remember the aggravation and comedy gold Mom gave me. Man, I wish I could spar with her some more.

(Above is my mom with her kazillion granddaughters.)

I'm not going to get maudlin. I'm definitely not going to describe the last emotionally crushing and exhausting weeks my brother and I experienced. Instead, let's celebrate this wonderful, stubborn, beautiful, frustrating, one-of-a-kind mother. 

Mom lived a full life on her own terms; stubbornly so. She was fond of saying, “I know what I know” and “I know I’m right.” Of course, she hailed from Missouri, the “Show Me State,” and wore that state cliche tightly like a snug turtleneck. She disagreed with my brothers and I on everything from politics to washing machines (don't ask), but did so with a mischievous sense of humor. And no matter how heated our ridiculous debates got, she’d always end the conversation with love.

What an amazing woman. When her husband--my dad--was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, she took her wedding vows literally. Like a warrior, she cared for Dad the rest of his life. She saw him through medical crises, job changes, and numerous life alterations. But she never once failed to pick him up from work on time and heft that heavy wheelchair into the car's trunk. Throughout these trials, they adapted and never stopped loving one another.

Miraculously, she also managed to raise three boys, a task not for the faint of heart. I mean, one daughter nearly did me in.

A master of multi-tasking, Mom also worked in real estate and hauled her sons everywhere, from grocery stores to school to auto shops and the dreaded fabric stores, where my younger brother and I remember spending endless, boring hours. I'm talking hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and...

(Deep breath)...hours and hours and days.

And more hours and hours and hours.

And hours.

An amusing funeral anecdote (because they're sooooooo popular): after relating the fabric shop trauma in a speech I gave at Mom's memorial, one of the funeral directors who oversaw the proceedings came up to me afterward, nudged me, and said, "What you said about fabric stores? Man, that really brought memories back for me. I spent endless days with my mom in those, too."

I said, "really?"

"Yeah."

"It was almost like I spent my childhood there," I said. "It was brutal."

He just shook his head, lowered his eyelids as if experiencing PTSD. I agreed with a solemn nod. Had the pandemic not deterred it, I think a brothers-in-arms hug would've been appropriate.

Anyway, once we three sons had flown the coop, my parents enjoyed vacationing in Florida. They spent many winters there, joining the unofficial “snow birds” community. After my dad’s passing, Mom chose not to sit still and continued her yearly sojourns down south. There, she renewed her passion for dancing (something she enjoyed with my dad in their early days). She turned many an eye on the dance floor with numerous suitors, but none of them could keep up with her. In every sense possible.

One of my mom's biggest joys was her grandchildren.  She taught her granddaughters the art of cooking, made them Halloween costumes (she made my daughter a Sailor Moon costume! The accumulated months in fabric stores clearly paid off.), took them on adventures, and shared her big world with them.  And always with a wonderful, self-deprecating sense of sly humor which all of “Nana’s girls” have inherited. Every grandchild loved spending time with her. A true testament to her loving power.

A caring, generous of soul person, Mom lived her life as a Christian, treating everyone with respect and compassion.

But I'm trying not to mourn, because I believe Mom’s happy. Whatever kind of afterlife there is, I choose to believe she's in a wondrous dance hall meeting up once again with my dad (a venue where they met in the first place many years ago), he dapper in his 40’s movie star style handsomeness, where they’re dancing eternity away to some crazy big band song.

I miss you and love you, Mom.