An Echo Through the Ages

Mothers always have a 'thing' that they say, don't they. I don't know what other mothers say. Maybe it's something sweet ("Well as I live and breathe!"), maybe something threatening ("Go cut yourself a switch."), or maybe something pleasantly odd. Like in the atrociously funny movie Bad Santa, where the doddering grandmother always says "Let me fix you some sandwiches." So weird.

My mother has a pile of them. If you asked why, she said "'Cause Y's a crooked letter and it can't be made straight." If you hollered when she brushed your hair and tore straight through a knot, she said, "Oh be quiet before I give you something to really cry about." (Not that she ever did - or would, for that matter - but still. She did say it.) If we were in the car and drove past a cemetery, she'd say (every single time), "I hear people are just dying to get in there." Hyuck, hyuck. And if you were fresh-mouthed at her...

The other day I was in the car with Captain Mommypants and my little brother Bug, who is six years old. Mom and I were trying to talk about something, and Bug was in the backseat rattling off his perpetual and incessant commentary on every single car we drove past. "Hey, Mom, did you see the Mazda 5? Hey, Mom, that was a Toyota Prius. Hey Mom, there is a bwue Mewcedes. Hey Mom..."

And our mother, who normally has the patience of a saint when it comes to her children's musings and chatterings, got frustrated that she couldn't hear what I was saying ("Hey, Mom...") and waved her hand in the air at him, and said in an unusually dismissive tone, "Yeah, yeah, Bug, keep it to yourself for a little bit, will you?"

This, it turns out, is the joy of children. Because Bug, outraged that she wouldn't listen to him, leaned forward in his seat, touched Mom on the shoulder, and said what is likely the number one most recognizable Mommy-ism our mother uttered over the years as she wrangled 5 highly spirited children into adulthood: "Mom," said Bug, in a censorious tone so like hers that he could have been a parrot. "Don't you EVER. EVER. Talk to me like that again."

Needless to say, I died laughing.