Ten Things I Want To Thank My Mother For On The Occasion Of Her 75th Birthday

Mom and Dad - aren't they gorgeous?

My mom's 75th birthday is today. (How is that possible?)

It's a milestone birthday and richly deserving of some kind of official recognition on a scale equal with the Queen's Jubilee, although I suspect Paul McCartney and Elton John won't be serenading my dear mother while she imbibes in barbecued hot dogs and birthday cake. Thus having no celebrity performances or parades in the plan, the least I can do is present Ten Things I Want To Thank My Mother For On The Occasion Of Her 75th Birthday:

1. Thanks for having beautiful dark hair and big brown eyes and tremendous dimples and passing those gorgeous things my way.

2. Thanks for your kindness and generosity, your big heart, your all-round niceness. You have always been, and will always be, a lady in the old-fashioned and true sense of the word. Except when you give bad drivers the finger. Or when you perfectly hork your gum out of the window of a moving car which, by the way, is a skill I admire and try to emulate whenever possible. You look like you would never say shit even if your mouth was full of it, except when you do say shit. Which you almost never do. Mostly your swear word of choice is "asshole" which usually accompanies giving bad drivers the finger.

Family portrait taken in Midland, mid 1960s. That's me with my teddy bear.
My little sister, Liz, wasn't born yet.

3. Thank you for busting your middle finger and having it wrapped in a cast in the up position for a month. It wouldn't have been nearly as funny if you had broken your index finger or your baby finger. I never grew tired of seeing you wave that stiff bandaged gauze covered middle digit around. Thank you for being funny.

4. Thank you for having that dream about the giant squirrel chasing you up a telephone pole. When did you have that dream... back in the 1960s? See? A dream that's almost 50 years old, a dream that wasn't even my own, and I still think of it. You probably forget it entirely but I remember we were sitting in your bedroom in Midland, that big bedroom in that big old house, and we were talking about bad dreams  and you said the scariest dream you ever had was about a giant squirrel chasing you up a telephone pole. It was funny, this dream of a giant squirrel, and I still think it's so cute that your scariest dream was about a plus-sized squirrel. We were all so young then. I was just a little kid, maybe five or six. You were in your 20s. A girl, really. You always seemed so beautiful to me. Even in that ratty old pink housecoat, the one with the black buttons. Even when you had curlers in your hair. I loved those conversations at bedtime. You were the best mother imaginable.

5. Thanks for rubbing Watkins White Liniment on my legs when I was crying with rheumatism. You gave me a baby Aspirin, you rubbed liniment on my knees and you dried my tears with your kindness and your patience. I still have bad knees and I can't tell you how often I think of you when I'm rubbing Voltaren or Deep Cold onto my aching legs. It never feels as good as when you did it. It never will. Funny, how no matter what was wrong with me, no matter what I was crying about, you always gave me a baby Aspirin to make feel better. Just yesterday I had a terrible day at work and was bawling and feeling sorry for myself and thinking the world hated me. I went to the bathroom and took two Tylenol. I had no pain to speak of. Only the pain in my heart. But I thought of you when I took those pills and you know what, they made me feel better. Thanks.

Mom opening a Christmas present (from Simpson's!) in Markham, 1970s.

6. Thanks for making me spaghetti when I had my period that time when I was a teenager. I really wanted spaghetti for supper that night. We didn't have it often, mostly because Dad didn't like it, but I really wanted it this one time so I said, "I have a craving for it," and you knew it was a womanly-thing, a period-thing, so you made spaghetti using a can of Bravo spaghetti sauce. Dad probably bitched about it but to me it was more delicious than the juiciest steak and also our womanly secret.

7. Thanks for not murdering me. I know, there was times when I deserved it. So thanks for not shooting me in my retreating back when I ran away from home; or hanging me for a thief when I stole money from my brother; or strangling me when I was mouthy, which was all the time so frankly your arthritic fingers couldn't have borne that much strangling; or stabbing me with a butter knife when I refused to help with the dishes. Charming child, I was. Charming adult, too. Sorry about all that. Wish I could have been better because you deserved better.

8. Thanks for having beautiful penmanship; for being a talented artist; for being creative in all things. I love the way you write – I know that sounds silly but your handwriting truly is a thing of beauty. As a messy writer I envy and admire that about you. Also, you should blog more because you are a natural born storyteller with many, many stories to tell. You know me, I hate to be bossy, but get busy. :)

9. Thank you for ordering birthday cakes from Stouffville Bakery, the vanilla double layer ones with lemon curd filling. Thanks for the typewriter under the Christmas tree. Thanks for paying my way through college. Thanks for decorating the yard so beautifully for my first wedding. Thanks for playing Here Comes the Bride on the organ. Thanks for making the world's best apple pies. Thanks for taking us up to the cottage and letting us run wild and have the best times of our lives, while you sat alone and lonely with a crossword puzzle book and your own thoughts. Thanks for supporting me through thick and thin. You have never let me down, never. In a world where nothing is sure and people are cruel, you are my one constant, my rock. Thank you for unselfishly giving up your own life for your family.

10. Thank you for everything. I love you so much. Happy Birthday!

Mom and blue-haired Angus at his Grade 8 graduation last year.
She's still gorgeous. He still has blue hair.

P.S. The birthday girl sent me an e-mail last night to say how much she loved this post and everyone's comments and good wishes. She wanted me to pass on her thanks to you because she was having trouble posting a reply:

"Thanks Cathy for all the kind words you said about me. Thanks to all the people who sent great comments. I tried to comment but it didn't work. I had forgotten about the squirrel dream. That's funny. Thank you very much. See you to-morrow. Love Mom"

P.S.S. I'd like to thank CarrieBoo for her generous donation to the YMCA's Adult Literacy Programs, through my participation in the upcoming Muskoka Novel Marathon. THANK YOU CARRIE! She has a really fun blog, by the way, where she talks about family life and foibles and writing in an entirely entertaining way. Check her out! The novel marathon is getting closer - it all starts Friday, July 13 (eek!) with a whole weekend of writing, writing and more writing at Club 55 in Huntsville. Thirty writers will try their darndest to pump out a novel in that time, as well as raising as much money as they can so other people can learn to read and write. It's astonishing how many adults are illiterate in this day and age. Until I saw the statistics, I had no idea. If you'd like to find out more about the marathon, visit the website. If you'd like to sponsor my own efforts, click on the Muskoka chair (in the States it's called an Adirondack chair) on the top right side of my blog. I am thrilled about the support I've had so far and it makes my heart sing every time I see another donation. So thanks everyone! oxoox

Thanks James

I love you, James Taylor. Thanks.


When you're down and troubled and you need a helping hand
and nothing, whoa, nothing is going right.
Close your eyes and think of me and soon I will be there 
to brighten up even your darkest nights.

You just call out my name, and you know where ever I am
I'll come running to see you again.
Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you have to do is call 
and I'll be there, yeah, yeah,
you've got a friend.

If the sky above you should turn dark and full of clouds
and that old north wind should begin to blow,
keep your head together and call my name out loud.
Soon I will be knocking upon your door.
You just call out my name, and you know where ever I am
I'll come running to see you again.
Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you have to do is call and I'll be there.

Hey, ain't it good to know that you've got a friend? 
People can be so cold.
They'll hurt you and desert you. Well, they'll take your soul if you let them,
oh yeah, but don't you let them.

You just call out my name, and you know where ever I am
I'll come running to see you again.
Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you have to do is call, Lord, I'll be there, yeah, yeah,
you've got a friend. You've got a friend.
Ain't it good to know you've got a friend. Ain't it good to know you've got a friend.
Oh, yeah, yeah, you've got a friend.

The Shopper's senior's discount

That's it. It's official. I'm old as dirt.

The other day I was into Shopper's Drug Mart in Bracebridge, laying down one-tenth of my weekly pay cheque on feminine hygiene products and soap. What a total waste of money, I tell ya. Think how rich I'd be if I was a man who didn't bathe.

Not that I know any men like that ....

My first indication that I was Old came when I was floundering around with the debit machine. Not that I want to offend anyone but, come on. Everyone knows old people have trouble with debit machines. Young people, why they just zip their card through with the confidence borne from being hatched with their fingers on the text button. Makes for some painful childbirth, I gotta tell you. Those little cell phone buttons and antennaes hurt on the way out. Thank god for touch-screens.

Old people, well, how do I say this... they just SUCK at debit machines, drive-through banking windows and even ATMs. Have you ever been behind an old person in line to pay for something? They always swipe their card the wrong way, for starters. Then they forget their pin number. Then they punch in the wrong pin number and they often hit chequing instead of savings and vice versa so they have to run through the whole process about 50 times until they get it right.

So there I was, fecking up the debit machine at Shopper's. I have a new chip debit card and I'm never sure what end is the right end. One end has a square chippy looking thing but the other end has markings that look sort of like arrows. Why can't it just have a sentence that says INSERT HERE? Honestly. So there I was floundering around with the wrong end of the card. The lady reset it and I tried the other end, but I didn't push it in far enough so she had to reset it again. This time I tried swiping it but I swiped it backwards. Finally I got the feckitty-fecking card in right but I was so embarrassed that I momentarily forgot my pin number. I stared at the woman with my mouth gawping open and drool threatening to come out while my mind completely erased. It was like the black screen of death on my computer. It took a few inexorably long, painful, horrible moments before my brain rebooted and I remembered the pin number.

But of course I hadn't remembered it exactly. The machine screen screamed at me, in all-caps: INCORRECT PIN NUMBER. TRANSACTION CANCELLED. PLEASE TRY AGAIN. Feck, feck, feck.

The lady behind the counter was not amused, so I tried my level best to amuse her. That's what I do. Always try to amuse those who cannot and will not be amused. If I can garner a smile out of one of these pickle-up-their-butt sourpusses, I feel I have served my greater purpose in the universe.

"That's what happens when you get to my age," I said to her, shooting her a dazzling smile and hoping I had no dinner remnants wedged between my teeth. "You forget how to use the debit machine." I was hoping she'd say something like, "Oh, you're not old, what are you talking about?" But she was busily ignoring me while she reset our transaction.

Not content with leaving well enough alone I said, "Pretty soon I'll be ready for the senior's discount. How old do you have to be for that anyway?" I was thinking she was going to say 60, or maybe even 55.

"Fifty," she said.

"Fifty," I repeated. "Really."

"Really," she said. "You can insert your card again. This way." She showed me which end to insert.

"So I'm old enough to get a senior's discount," I said. Shocked. I hoped she'd say, "Naaaa, you don't look old enough for a senior's discount."

"Yep," she said.

I asked her what, exactly the senior's discount was. "Twenty per cent off all purchases on Thursdays."

TWENTY PER CENT OFF. I didn't know what to think. I was excited and depressed all at the same time. My mind was racing between, YOU'RE A SENIOR and YOU'RE GONNA GET STUFF CHEAPER and SHIT - I GET PAID ON FRIDAYS AND THUS HAVE NO MONEY ON THURSDAYS.

Yesterday was my supervisor's 50th birthday. We threw a pot luck party for him. He got a nice bottle of Chivas as a present but the biggest excitement came when I announced he now qualified for the senior's discount at Shopper's. He was so excited he texted his slightly younger wife to tell her the big news.

Then it dawned on him – he would now be the one to pay for his wife's soap and feminine hygiene products every Thursday for several years to come.

Born to be wild and have a really flat ass

There have been some "discussions" about Dave's new motorcycle. When he first was talking about buying a used donor-cycle I had an opinion. I know, hard to believe, me having an opinion.

"Get a big one," I said. "Like a Goldwing. Something we can both sit on comfortably." I know he thinks of me as being a slender young tart with a narrow derriere so I had to remind him that I am old and creaky with a rather enormous butt that doesn't sit well on crotch rockets and in other smallish spaces.

He did not listen to me, obviously still believing I have the butt of a small boy, and bought a mid-sized bike. A Kawasaki Vulcan, 750, I think. I mention this in case you know something about bikes and only to help you imagine the seat on which our butts sit.

I was nervous about the bike. Well, maybe nervous isn't strong enough a word. I was actually scared out of my cheesely mind. Every time I climbed aboard all I could think was how violently my melon was going to explode when I hit the pavement. Dave is a good driver though and it wasn't long before I relaxed and started to LOVE going on the bike. That is precisely the moment that Dave decided the bike wasn't big enough to take us on long rides. I was like, what the heck? I TOLD you to get a big bike! Instead of arguing with me further, because he has learned there is no point, we decided to hit the open road on Saturday.

The first half hour was pure bliss. I raised my arms in the air proclaiming I'M KING OF THE WORLD and hugging my baby and clinking helmets and singing "like a true nature child, I was born, born to be wild" on a loop because those are the only words I know.

The second half hour my butt started to go a wee bit numb. Just a wee bit. Dave started squiggling in his own seat and it wasn't long before he pulled over for a break. "How's your bum?" he asked. "A little numb," I replied. Because I am a poet.

A while later it wasn't Steppenwolf I was singing, it was Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb."

We took lots of breaks but the bike ass we were experiencing was cumulative and by the end of the day my butt was as flat as a proverbial pancake. There was no more singing. There was screaming. From my ass. My ass was screaming, "GET ME OFF THIS STUPID BIKE RIGHT NOW," and when it wasn't screaming at me it was asking, "Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we almost there? How bout now? Are we there yet? Huh? Are we there? Are we there?"

The pain was exquisite. Who knew a butt could hurt so much just from sitting on a motorcycle for a day? Oh, and my knees hurt just as much as my arse. When I finally got off I was walking like a greenhorn who just got off a horse, all bow-legged and saddle sore.

Other than that, it was a good day.

Oh, wait a minute. That's not true. We did have a rather horrifying moment when the bike broke down halfway between Dwight and Huntsville in the middle of fecking nowhere.

Not having a cell phone, because we are the only two people in the universe who don't have one, apparently, Dave said, "We're going to have to push the bike into town." Town was about 15 km away. A rather long jaunt for two out of shape old people walking bow-legged, pushing a broken flat-ass-inducing motorcycle.

Dave being a mechanic and all, he was able to wiggle some wires and check the spark and even though he didn't think he could do it, he fixed the problem and we were on our way again. You know how he checked the spark? He stuck a screwdriver in the cap-thingey where the spark plug goes and then he yelped and said, "yup, lots of spark there." As if that wasn't bad enough, he had to do the same thing with the other plug. I was like, "seriously? You're gonna do that again?" When he was done his ears were smoking and his hair was curly.

Dave's new-to-him toy. This ass-break photo was taken
at a roadside parkette between Algonquin Park and Dwight,
before the breakdown. Thus, he still likes the bike.

Boat launch at Dwight. It was a fine day, a real beauty.

This bear is one of the roadside attractions at The Dwight
Trading Post, a gift shop and snack stand that sells all kinds
of tacky knick-knacks, tremendously comfortable moccasins
and really tasty fudge.

Dave-the-mechanic goes to work fixing the bike. Thank goodness he did.
I just could not imagine walking for 15 km.

Slack and Field Day

Yesterday my son Sam had a Bum Day. No, nothing to do with his derriere, other than he spent the whole day sitting on it. With my permission, of course, because yesterday was Track and Field Day at his school and I wouldn't make my worst enemy suffer through Track and Field Day.

It's fine if you're one of the five kids at every school who are actually athletic. For the rest of us, T&FD is exquisite torture. First of all, it is always held on the hottest freaking day of the year. Ninety-five degrees in the shade and, the beauty of T&FD is it's in a FIELD where there is no shade, so the sun just beats down on all the non-athletic, sweating-like-buckets, humiliated-beyond-belief puddles of torture-victim humanity we call schoolchildren.

It's not like we were ever trained for such events. Oh, OK, so maybe we had one session of standing long jump in gym class one day, just enough of a lesson to know you were never, ever, going to jump more than eight inches from the line. That, to me, was the stupidest of the events: stand there and jump. Really? What genius dreamt that up? "Geez, Bob, let's draw a line in the dirt and see who can jump further. Yup, yup, that sounds like fun, yup, yup."

High jump isn't much better. Again with the jumping – what are we, frogs? People are meant to stand on two feet, not leap about like gazelles. Obviously only a few of us are capable of doing that freakish lying on your back in middair thing that gets you across the pole. The rest of us have to deal with the gravity that gloms onto our sweaty backsides and keeps us anchored firmly to the dirt.

And don't even get me started on running races. I could not care less about who can run faster. You can run faster than me? Well, goodie for you. You go right ahead and sweat like a pig and twist your ankle and look smoking-hot-silly in the school gym uniform while all your wobbly bits shake and shudder as you blunder across the finish line – all that so you can get a green Participation ribbon.

I always vowed no child of mine would be forced to endure T&FD.

So Happy Bum Day, Sam.

***

Thanks to everyone who has sponsored me in the upcoming Muskoka Novel Marathon.

Ed Boutilier

Linda McLean

Lori Freshwater

Laurita Miller

Amy Severino

Daisy the Curly Cat

Aimee White

I'm nowhere close to my goal and would appreciate any help you can give, even if it's a mention on your own blog. For all the details, click here. To donate, click on the Muskoka Chair over on the top right of my blog. I apologize for being so yappy about this but I think it's a great cause. You're never, ever too old to learn how to read and write.