Mother's Day, Part I

     Jesus helps my mother do her hair.  


    Has for years.  He's her personal Lord and Savior, oh sure, but he's also her bouffant-of-glory wingman.  Do you think I'm blaspheming?  Then you don't understand the crucial connection between a Texan woman and her hair.  


    But Jesus does.  And so, as she told me, He's by her side every morning as she wields her curling iron and some Aqua Net, careful not to spray it too near the attendant lit cigarette.  Mom smokes in the house.  Of course she does.


     "I don't have as much hair as I used to. I have to pray every morning to get it to do anything.  Jesus helps me."  Again, this I understand.  Hair "does" things, or it should.  In Texas, hair is a verb.


     Mother's Day has me thinking about Mom and about a few of the women who have been mothers to me, including my stepmom, who will get her own entry next, and the indescribable Auntie Em.  But today I got off the phone with Mom, who recently came home after a 4 week stint in a "skilled nursing facility" from a broken hip. For a woman who has had Crohn's disease for 30 years and has recently beaten cancer, the broken hip should have been the end of her.  Instead, she was released after a month with the doctors shaking their heads:  "You're some kind of miracle.  We just don't understand it."


     What they don't understand is her fierce resilience.  Mom chalks this up to astrology.  (And yes, Jesus and the horoscope co-exist very nicely on Planet Mom, thankyouverymuch).  Like myself, she is a Leo in western astrology, a Horse according to the Chinese.  Of course, she is a Water Horse and I'm a Fire Horse, so you can imagine the fun around our house when I was a teenager.  Anyway, whenever moments of strength are required, she draws either upon her Leonine heritage ("We're Leos.  What others call arrogance is just our natural superiority") or, when that fails, Scarlett O'Hara, her role model.  Don't get me started on the myriad times she slips into a fake Georgian drawl to assert some kind of faux Southern strength.  I remind her she's a Texan and to put back the twang.  We channel Elizabeth Taylor from Giant, toast Scarlett's pluck if not her accent, and return to praising our sun sign and the Son of God, who, Mom reminds me, "Is always there.  Don't forget it.  And don't feel like you can only pray on Sunday.  Pray when you're doing your hair.  Jesus understands."  


     When Mom was diagnosed with oral cancer a couple of years ago, it scared me but came as no surprise.  She started smoking in her "Mad Men" college days when the doctor told her it would help with her asthma.  "He said I needed to cough more to loosen up the lungs.  Of course, he was wrong, but what did we know?" she asked, drawing on a Marlboro Light as we discussed the big topics--God, mortality, hair-- sipping green beer on St. Patrick's Day at the American Legion.  The room was already starting to cloud over with a nicotine haze.  It was late afternoon, "Wheel of Fortune" was on TV, stepdad Ed was cranky because he wanted to watch "Gunsmoke" reruns. 


    "Do you think that maybe, just maybe, the smoking might have led to the cancer?" I asked, trying not to sound accusatory.


   Utter dismay crossed her face.  "What, child?  Of course not!  Smoking causes lung cancer. I have oral cancer.  Not the same thing at all."


   Um.


    "So do you think you oughta try quitting now?" 


     "Are you kidding?!  For God's sake, I have CANCER!  I'm way too stressed out to stop smoking now!"  


     Never underestimate the power of denial.   And sure enough, after surgery, Mom was fine.  Then the broken hip.  A month later, Mom is fine.  Her hair is thinner; it won't tease up like it used to in the picture above, but she does it everyday.  It's not vanity.  It is resilience.  It is resistance.  It is never giving up the good fight.  This week I'm thinking about these eccentric sorts of strength and thanking Jesus for any amount of it that came down the pipeline to me or to my own kids.  I love you, Mom.