Apr
14
Written by:
Mr. Harbaugh
4/14/2010 4:38 AM
My mom wondered when I was going to get around to writing about her. Well, it's time. As Abraham Lincoln said "All I am...I owe to my angel mother." True for me too, Abe, and for so many of us. Remember that. Call home: your mother misses you.
I call my mother once a week, at least. It's the expectation she put out there for my siblings and I when we left the nest for college, or, in my sister's case, to get married. She was willing to turn us over to the big bad wolves of the world, as long as we called home on a regular basis to tell her about it. "I expect one phone call per week to know how you're doing," she told us. Simple as that.
The terms of this arrangement aren't negotiable, and they never end. She told my siblings and me that after a week of not hearing from any one of us, she she would start to worry. After two weeks with no phone call, she told us she would get in her car and drive directly to wherever it was we called home and start what U.S. Marshalls call a "hard target search". If you've seen movies like "The Fugitive" you know what I'm talking about. I've never tested my mom on this. I don't want her busting through my classroom door while I'm teaching, or kicking out a window in the basement to crawl in the house in the middle of the night while I'm sleeping upstairs. She's going on sixty-eight now, but she'd still do it.
The strongest bond in the world is the one mothers have for their children, and it makes sense. For almost ten months that child and that mom share one body, and though the umbilical cord is cut at birth, the bond remains. Years later the mom has to cut the apron strings, especially with boys, and that is a psychologically critical moment in everybody's life. But the bond continues, strong as ever. My mom had a plan for that one, too.
My mom told her three boys that we'd better not love somebody unless we were ready for her to love them, too. I think we were in high school then. It didn't make sense to me at the time, but her point was that when you're the mother of boys, and that boy gets married, life, holidays, etc., usually revolve around the woman and her family. So my mom forged her own relationship with any person my brothers and I ever dared to love. Long after most of those relationships ended, my mom still loves them all. She still sends cards and gifts to my ex wife, and to my brother's high school girlfriend. It used to drive me crazy; now I think of them as consolation prizes. But, it's not like she didn't warn us.
So now I live in Gobles with my wife and her family, and my mom's words from high school are as true as ever. Daily living makes it hard to get to Niles where my parents live as often as I'd like. But my mom takes pleasure in our weekly phone calls about how well everybody is doing, and she is truly glad we're surrounded by family all the time. I enjoy the phone calls too; five minutes on the phone with mom makes the big bad wolves take a few steps back into the woods.
I have also come to the realization that I'll never be a mom. So I try to be a hands-on dad, loving and involved. Most of the time I think I'm a pretty good dad, but I can't compete with the mom in the house. Mom wins. She's the one the kids look for first, the one they call out for in the middle of the night when the shadows are creeping, or when they get a cut or a scrape and need a little love to make it right. Even my daughter, my wife's stepdaughter, looks for the mom in the house first when she needs to share the details of the big bad wolves of her life.
But I accept my role, both as a dad, and as a son. First runner up. It's just better that way. Still it's not all bad, especially as my three-year old is getting down the finer points of potty training. "Mom, would you wipe my butt," he calls from the bathroom at least once a day. Those are the times when I get to sit back in the chair and say "well, you're the mom. He wants you. Go get it done." And she does, with a smile.
I guarantee he'll be calling home once a week when he's in his forties to tell his mother about his life. He won't want to test the limits of that bond, any more than any of us should. We're never not the child of the person who brought us into this world.
Copyright ©2010 Corey Harbaugh
1 comment(s) so far...
Re: Calling Mom
Your mom is a wise lady and I can totally relate having raised boys myself. We never want to give up our baby boys and never will. They will always be that even when they are old and gray. You take good care of your mama for as long as you have her because when she's gone, life is never the same. Love ya Corey.
By Weez on
4/26/2010 7:21 PM
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