mom-pom!

today is mother's day, and I miss my moms.

sometimes, she'll come into a room doing this crazy dance, punching her fists into the air and shuffling her feet and wiggling her body. all the while grinning with all her teeth and looking at you all twinkly, because she knows you're thinking, "whoa, that lady is cuh-ray-zee".

once, she tried to persuade me to change up my hair more often, and stop being so conservative with my haircuts. the solution, she tried to convince me, was to cut my hair as short as possible, and wear wigs. that way, I could try new and exciting things. that night, she left me a wig catalogue on my pillow, and offered to buy me my first one.

when I was 12, I asked my mother what "oral sex" was, after hearing jackie edwards talk about who had been doing it at school. she told me it was when you talked about sex and I wondered what all the hoopla had been about in the cafeteria earlier that day, since my mother and I were doing it right then. in fact, it seemed like all anyone ever did at school was engage in oral sex when the teachers weren't around. to this day I don't know whether she didn't know herself or made up something to keep me from asking again.

in college, when I was going through a dress-like-a-60s-stewardess-on-acid phase, my mother sent me a day-glo orange mini-(and I mean mini-)dress. idaho's eyeballs practically popped out when he saw exactly how mini it actually was. and all my friends always shook their heads and looked at me, "your mother sent you this?"

my mother just does things. like, she will say, "I'm going to start making dolls! dolls that are custom-made to look like people who ask me to make dolls for them!" or "I'm going to start painting! and I'm going to be so good people are going to shake their heads and wonder why I haven't been painting for the past 30 years!" or "I'm going to crochet quilts for everyone! pick out your colors now!" and then she will do them.

what does your mother do?