Mother's Day

Today is a special day for me. Well. It's a special day for all the Moshers. It's not a day that will have great fanfare because, for some reason, fanfare is something that either has never existed for the Moshers or it is something that DID exist and waned...I'm not really sure, to be perfectly honest with you. I know, for myself, a few years ago--while I was in my thirties--I sort of just FORGOT about fanfare. It wasn't important on a regular basis. Unless there was something the really celebrate, I didn't see the point.

When you are a child, everything is worthy of fanfare. Christmastime must be a production. So must Easter, The Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, birthdays, the first day of school, the last day of school... Everything was a milestone. When I was in my twenties it was the same way. In fact..I remember living through my twenties with landmark moments everywhere. If I was opening in a play, I spent weeks getting the RIGHT opening night gifts and cards. If there was to be a party in our home, it was days of prep work. If it was Christmas, there had to be a gift for everyone I knew. All of life had to be lived to the fullest. It wasn't really, though, living life to the fullest; it was living life to the noisiest. It was cachopany.

When I was 29 I moved to New York. That was a fanfare. Well...not really...it was a fanfare for awhile but on the the day I left town, I got into a car and said goodbye to Kim Held, Todd Bistany and Jane Titus and, together, Paul Tigue and I drove out of Dallas. Once I landed in New York, there was no fanfare. There was just quiet peace and the feeling of coming home--also the feeling of terror over the future. Since that day, since I arrived in Manhattan, I have become (some will laugh at this) quieter. Quieter inside. I don't need, I don't seek out the noise, the fanfare, the brouhaha. I spend Christmases wondering and searching for the true meaning. Birthdays come and go with no more than a celebratory trip to the Roxy to dance (excpept for my fortieth, which was deserving of a little noise); and all holidays are just another day. Happy Labour Day. Happy Easter. Happy St Patrick's Day. Happy Thanksgiving (this one is fine cause it's about family and food--essentials!). It is all just another day because, in my mind, every day should be a holiday. The Moshers don't really do presents anymore. We all have whatever it is we need and if each of us wants something, we have learned to go out and get it for ourselves... So it is all, always, just about a phone call to say Happy Father's Day, Happy Mother's Day, Happy Christmas, Happy Anniversary.

Happy Birthday.

Happy Birthday Mommy.

Today is my mother's birthday.

I don't have a good head for dates. One year, I (literally) forgot my own birthday til it was almost past. During the first few years of our relationship, I would have to wait for November and I would cheat a look at Pat's driver's liscence to see which date was his birthday. I have made so many jokes, over the years, about our anniversary being April 24th (Streisand's birthday--that joke makes Pat crazy) that I no longer know what our anniversary is.

I have never, never, forgotten my mother's birthday.

I tell Pat all the time that he is my favourite person. He is too. That is as it should be. Your spouse should be your favourite person.

But My Mother was my favourite person for 20 plus years before I met Pat. That gives her a place of honour in the favourite person hall of fame. In the movie PSYCHO, Norman Bates says that a boy's best friend is his mother. And, indeed, there are those who might say that referencing the movie PSYCHO when talking about me and my mother, is appropriate. I don't think mama and I are like Norma and Norman Bates--though I will say there are those who know that we can be feared..... I say that with my tongue planted, firmly, in cheek. But it is a little true.

I am my mother's son. We are equally stubborn, fiercely defensive of our loved ones, opinionated, passionate, artistic (yes, my mother is an artist, too). We have the same obsessive compulsive reaction to food. We look alike. We laugh alike. We talk alike. We cuss alike. She gets me; probably because I am so like her. She has always been there to protect me and we always go to each other to cry.

Everyone (if they are lucky) loves their mother. Some (if they are lucky) like their mother. My mommy is my champion, my hero, my protector, my teacher. While I was growing up, she taught me about beauty and about integrity. She taught me about dignity and about art. My mother gave me my work ethic and my temperment. She showed me how to fight for myself and for my loved ones. She taught me how to dance.

I remember nights, in high school, when she and I would stay up all night making costumes for school plays or cakes for school birthdays or banana breads for bake sales. I remember gathering books for school book fairs and watching over Ginger when she was about to deliver a litter of puppies. I remember the day when I was eight years old, coming down the stairs in my early morning grogginess and having her quietly say to me, her hand on my shoulder "Be real nice to daddy today...his mommy died last night." I didn't really know what that meant but she showed me, on that day, that it is a good thing to do pre emptive damage control for your spouse, to protect them in whatever way you could. There were days of great laughter, growing up--haha; once, in our home in Portugal, together, with great terror, we used a bb gun to shoot at, over and over, a humungous rat in the garden. We were all terrified and the poor creature was just repeatedly wounded and not dead..and we didn't know what to do.

My mother gave me my most treasured musical tastes. Natch, I love musical theater, Liza, Barbra and all the other divas. I would not have known about the other music out there, were it not for mama. It is a recollection so incredibly vivid that it transcends the time of thirty plus years. Living in Portugal, I would wake up on Saturday mornings, the sun not streaming but POURING into huge, open living room windows, reflecting up off of white carpets and sofas and bouncing off of buttercream yellow walls. The smells in the house were contradictory--there was the smell of Pine cleaner and Windex blending with the smell of bacon, frying eggs, pancakes and Portuguese coffee. As I came up the stairs to the main living quarters of the Mosher household, these sights filling my eyes and these smells filling my nostrils, my ears filled with my mother's music. Carly Simon's NO SECRETS, Carole King's TAPESTRY, The Mama's & The Papa's singing CALIFORNIA DREAMIN, John Denver, Jim Croce, Paul Simon, The Rolling Stones, Karen Carpenter, Bobby Goldsboro and my all time favourite singer, Helen Reddy singing PEACEFUL. I think this is why I still listen to these singers. They remind me of my mother. I think this is why I love the sun. It reminds me of my mother. I think this is why I cook and clean and open every window in my home, as often as I can; it reminds me of my mother.

Stargazer lilies remind me of my mother.

Mama and I used to turn on Neil Diamond singing SWEET CAROLINE and dance--he would say "sweet caroline" and the music would go BAM BAM BAM and we would do the bump.

She used to love to listen to my Barbra Streisand recording of TOMORROW. It made the house hopeful.

The smell of my mother's banana bread makes any day and any location Christmastime in Switzerland. I have learned to make that banana bread so that my home smells like my mother. It even tastes, almost, just right. I HAVE (I am proud to say) mastered her Thanksgiving tukey and dressing.

My mother was comfortable in jeans and a t shirt or in a Nolan Milleresque evening gown. She taught me how to to embrace the duality of dressing for one's various personalities.

So much of who I am is based on sharing blood and personality traits with this woman. Having come from this place, from this woman who was (as a child) nicknamed Snookie by her parents because she was a trouble maker like the famous Baby Snooks (created by Fanny Brice!), is a fact of myself that gives me more pride than almost anything about myself.

My mother is an extremely private person. She does not share her intimate thoughts well. She says "I love you" but that is just about where it stops.

When I was thirteen, I tried to kill myself. In the aftermath, my mother sent me a Hallmark card. I actually know, right now, where it is. I can turn around at my desk and open the drawer where I keep it and take it out. Oh. It turns out it ISN'T a Hallmark card--it is a Wood Winds card.

"Dear Stephen. I know you are different from other kids your age. You are also very spoiled and have little time for people who won't listen to you. But you must not hurt yourself. What good does that do. It doesn't hurt them. They just think you're crazy...."

When I was 19 I tried to kill myself again. I woke up in the hospital in the ICU ward, my mother holding my hand and saying "stephen.....stephen....where is your class ring?" I understood. Even at that young age, even in that compromised state, I understood--she needed something SPECIFIC on which to focus.

At 29, I was shot in a drive by shooting. Taken to the hospital and left there, on a gurney, in a hallway for six hours, I began screaming at Pat "Get my mother on the phone! She will get me out of here!!" He did. She did.

When I left Texas and moved to New York, leaving my mommy was one of the most heartbreaking moments of my life. Standing on the street in front of the office where she worked, holding each other and crying before getting into my UHaul and leaving..well..it's a most treasured moment in my life. She gave me the Dr Seuss book OH THE PLACES YOU'LL GO.

"Dear Stephen: For almost thirty years my life has been an adventure with you. Because you ARE an adventure. Granted, some of those years have been MAJOR ORDEALS but your progress forward these last few years have made up for most.... Anyway, you are about to start another adventure and I don't know why but I'm feeling a bit like you're going off to Kindergarten for the first time again....."

That's one of the things she has taught me most. Be straight. Be honest. Don't cut corners. Just freakin do it.

I say, often, that I am lucky to have chosen my favourite mommy for my own. She always says "Your favourite mommy? I'm your only mommy."

Yes.

But I believe, with every fiber of my being, in that place where you know things..that I was a soul waiting to be born and I looked through the catalogue and said "HER. SHE is the one I want."

Today is my mother's birthday. Today is my national holiday.

Let the fanfare begin.

ps. In the photos above, you will see my mother throughout the years; with me as a baby, my parents and me on my graduation day, together, and (most recently) mom and dad with their grandkids and then with their own children.