The thing about my mother is that she absolutely loved birthdays. Everyone’s birthdays, it was never just limited to her own, though her own was no exception. Maybe it was her love of a good party, any reason to celebrate in her mind, a good reason. She, to date, is the only person I have ever known that consistently called in sick to work on her birthday. "Work on my birthday?" She would say, "What? I get Jesus´s birthday off, but not mine. Yeah, right." And that in a nutshell describes Roberta.
But like I was saying, my mother loved birthdays, and for as long as I can remember, our birthdays, the birthdays of our youth, were events. Starting with the special birthday song, to the toilet paper streamers strung along the banisters and the doorways leading to the kitchen, to the special gold cutlery used only on the specialist of occasions . . . to of course, the ridiculously forced rhyming, silly birthday poem, written by her with a mother’s love as a testament to our worth on the planet and her underlying fear of our inevitable growing up.
And my mother didn’t just celebrate the actual day of her birth. Nope. She was the kind of person that had a birth week, or even, if she could pull it off, a birth month. "Oh no Jennifah," she would smirk, "you can’t be mean to me. It’s my birth month." And since she was the only one of us not born in the month of November, somehow that logic worked. Maybe it was just because she was prone to saying things like that. Maybe it was, because despite everything that was hard to accept about her, you just knew she would have done just about anything for you. . . given you the shirt off her back, laid down across the mud puddle so your shoes wouldn’t get dirty . . . really, anything if it meant that my brother, Ross and I were happy. And not mad at her. She despised the idea of someone being mad at her. In fact, it was so extreme of an aversion that it was almost like a sickness. One that at times, I catch glimpses of in me.
"Roberta, sometimes, it’s better to be pissed off . . . than to be pissed on," my father had the habit of saying when my mother had asked one of us for the umpteenth time, after a disagreement, if we were mad at her, if we still loved her. But honestly, I don’t think she ever got the whole concept of accepting people’s anger, or her own anger and disappointment, the way my father did. At times, I catch glimpses of that in myself as well . . . I guess we really are a product of where we come from.
Today, I am at the beach. A fitting place to spend her birthday and celebrate her existence in the world. My mother loved the beach. She absolutely hated herself in a bathing suit, but she couldn’t get enough of the beach. "Come on, you skinny marink," she would say to me, "Take your beached whale of a mother of the beach. Let’s see if I float." And it was strange that she liked the beach so much. Especially since she was scared to death of the water. Not to say that she didn’t get in. Sure, she would wade around, in the break of the waves, up to her mid-thigh, her crazy curls flopping in the wind. But for as long as I can remember, if you even remotely tried to get her face or upper body in the water, or even splashed her midriff, you would be greeted by her extremely loud, unique shrieks of protest, heard from the Delaware shore down to the Keys in Florida. "AARGH! AGH! Help! No! Stop! Help you’re killing me! AARGH."
My last memory of my mother at a beach is from about five years ago, at the beaches between Brighton Beach and Coney Island. It was summer. One of those really hot days where you can barely move and we had spent the better part of the morning sweating to death in the insane asylum that was my grandparents´apartment on Nostrand Avenue in Sheepshead Bay; my grandmother’s non-stop nagging about anything and everything that was wrong with the world, specifically with Roberta making the day that much more intolerable.
"Let’s get the f*&@ out of here," she whispered, "Before I lose it and do something I regret . . . like kill her." I remember my bother and I laughed then, but between you and me, I think she might have actually been serious.
So we packed up the car, with all the necessary beach items, calmed my grandparents´many fears: yes, we would wear sun block, sit in the shade, not go too deep into the water, lock the car, stay together and finally, the three of us escaped. As we got to the parking lot below their typical Brooklyn apartment, we looked up and as expected, there they were on the second floor terrace, waving goodbye, still yelling advice in the same way they always had for over 50 years.
When we finally parked, fed the meter, got to the beach, and set up the chair, the blanket, the cooler and all the other ridiculous items my mother had insisted on bringing for the two hour excursion to the beach, I remember that Ross and I decided to leave her there alone so we could go for a jog on the boardwalk. It’s possible that I was as fed up and frustrated with her as she had been with my grandmother, though honestly that part is not as clear to me at this point as I think back on that day. It’s funny what you remember.
Anyway, we were gone an hour, maybe an hour and a half tops, but upon our return, as we scalded the bottoms of our feet making our way back to the blanket, mom was nowhere to be found. We looked up and down along the coast scanning the sea of humanity that was the beach in the summer, searched the concessions stands, the bar, the shade . . . the obvious places, but no Roberta. Suddenly, Ross doubled over in laughter, one hand up in the air waving down toward the shore. And, as I followed his pointing finger to the water’s edge, I too had to laugh. Because there in the ocean, bodysurfing the polluted waters of her youth was our mother, beached whale set free, glasses still hanging on, lopsided on her face, her ever present shrieks of fear and glee alerting the entire beach going population in Brooklyn of her presence.
"Momala! Momala!" Ross and I began to chant as we made our way to the water and splashed in after her. Yep, she was a character alright: a sweet, loving, funny, smart, eccentric good time Charley. Any excuse for a party. And at the same time . . . a sad, conflicted, unsure, lost soul. A paradox embodied. A child never quite making her way through the confusion of self exploration and acceptance.
Maybe it’s just the drizzle that was falling when I arrived last night that was making me sad today as I sit here writing and remembering birthdays and my mother. Maybe it is simply being at the beach, waves crashing endlessly on the shore, a reminder of how little control we have over our lives in the end. Maybe, even though really, in the end, it’s just another day without her, her birthday makes me that much more aware of how much I just miss my mommy. Here´s to you mom. . .
Ode to Momala on Her Would Be 60th Birthday
It was 60 years ago that you were born.
To laugh, to sing off key, in a voice forlorn.
Those people who called you a nut, a woman gone crazy,
Well they were just bores, their vision a bit hazy.
They didn’t get your uncanny wit,
Your vulgar sense of humor that never quite fit.
Your incredible highs and the really low, lows.
The way you always got food on your clothes.
Cause you were the one who taught me to be,
Taught me to live and how to be free.
Taught me to stand up and be true to my self.
Whether the other kids liked it, or called me a fro wearing elf.
You told me I was as pretty and smart and as cool as I thought I could be.
And with those few words, you set me free.
From a life of trying to fit into the group.
You showed me it was them that were out of the loop.
You taught me things you yourself could not live.
But you knew they were true and important lessons to give.
And so momala, on your special day, and in honor of you . . .
I will head to the sea to shout and sing till my face turns blue.
With your off key voice still ringing in my ears,
I will sing the birthday song of our youth with a couple of tears,
"It’s your birthday, it’s momala´s birthday. It’s your birthday,
Birthday today. Hey. Hey!"
Happy Birthday Mom. Not a day goes by that you are not with me . . . always.
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