May 11, 2006

Dear Mom,

A long time ago, even before my conscious memory began recording, you began teaching me how to make a life. You read me stories. Dad was helping fight the Korean War, so neither of us had much else to do.

Each of us has our own stories about experiences remembered for reasons that are mysterious and personal but universal.

In the third grade the principal sent me home one day with a note reporting that I'd thrown a spit wad at the grownup Genie in a play at the high school. The whole grade-school audience rained spit wads on the Genie that day because the play was excessively awful. Sitting so far back in the auditorium, my spit wad had no chance of reaching the Genie so I threw one toward a cute girl.

When our teacher asked the next day if any of us in her class had thrown at the Genie, who probably had decided to quit show business, my hand went up. You'd taught me that lying was the worst thing anyone could do.

That turned out to be an exaggeration, but not much of one.

I don't recall my punishment. I do remember you weren't upset. Girls -- even mothers -- like bad boys who are good boys inside.

Most of my friends' mothers were classic housewives like Donna Reed. You were a saleswoman by day, on weekends put on sparkly gowns to sing with a jazz band. You wore wild outfits to perform in the Jaycees Follies, looking like Carmen Miranda one year, like Diana Rigg from "The Avengers" another.

You rehearsed your part while dusting or cooking breakfast.

In Big Sur someone asked, "What's your magic?" I didn't have an answer.

Your magic is singing and performing. Anyone's magic is whatever they love.

Some experiences are the same with all mothers. I remember your stricken face as my pickup truck drove off toward adventures in California and encounters with who knows what and who. Nobody wants to break his mother's heart. But everybody has to leave in one sense or another in order to come back someday.

I didn't call as often as you would have liked and still don't. But the feeling you're with me is always there, the feeling of being loved no matter what. Every child deserves that.

Joseph Chilton Pearce often writes about how children learn. He says: "We must be what we want our children to become." I would like to become a septuagenarian who's like you. You're still making music and Bavarian angel food cakes, you're good friends with your grandchildren, you root for the Cardinals and keep Dad from getting too comfortable in his easy chair. You still have the vroom.

Mother's Day's for embracing our mothers, whether they're here or not, and thanking them once again and always just for being themselves.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is managing editor of the Southeast Missourian.