Still Surprising

Mom can still surprise me, and that's saying something, since we've known each other for 60+ years now. 

I enjoy someone with a good story to tell or hidden traits that unexpectedly snap you out of complacency - not usually what one expects from their mother. Mothers are supposed to be, you know, reliable and sweet, ready with a hug and a cookie. And Mom is those things - well, maybe not so much with the cookies - but she's also got this adrenaline-firing interesting side.

Mom’s grandparents were from the Old Countries, and settled in Dover and Somersworth. Her father was a scrappy, blue-eyed Irishman who built many fine homes in Dover. "I always wanted to be a carpenter," Mom said the other day, out of the blue. "A what?!" I exclaimed, sure I'd heard wrong. "Yeah, I always thought it would be fun to get up on a roof and nail stuff down," she said. "But you were a secretary!" I protested. "Yeah, my father wouldn't teach me, so..." she answered with a shrug, a distant look in her eyes. Huh.

Growing up on the coast, she never learned to swim. No mountains there, so she didn’t learn to ski, either. When we were kids, Mom’s rule at the beach was we couldn't go deeper than she could safely walk out to save us if a bout of gripping cramp suddenly caused us to be in danger of drowning. Mom's short - so as we grew taller, we went from being allowed to go out neck-deep to chest deep to, eventually, barely our own waists deep. And yet, she learned to swim when her children were adults, just as she learned to ski when her children did.

She likes to travel, Dad not so much, so she often went without him. There's a photo of my not-an-animal-lover mother with a parrot on her shoulder in one place, and a monkey on her shoulder in another. She's ridden in hot-air balloons, she's been paragliding. In her 8th decade, she's still so busy I need to make an appointment to have lunch with her. 

I've never seen Mom stymied for more than a few minutes. She adapts, she adjusts, she conquers. She told me one of the two most important life lessons I've ever learned: If you didn't mean to do it, it doesn't count - which goes for inadvertently doing something good, as well as something bad. 

When I was in college, my best friend and I had summer jobs as the live-in maid and cook on the summer estate of a well-off elderly lady. When this lady got progressively lonely and bored with country life as the summer went on, to burn some time she started her cocktail hour earlier and earlier.

One evening after a very early and lengthy cocktail hour, my friend stood in the butler's pantry waiting for the bell that summoned her to remove the supper dishes and bring in dessert. She waited and waited, and eventually we cracked the door open and took a peek. There, face-down in her dinner plate, was our passed-out boss, while her dog scarfed down the uneaten dinner as fast as he could. We lifted her up and carried her to her bedroom, washed her face, took off her shoes, and tucked her up on top of the bed. Then off we went to clean up the mess.

After about 15 minutes, we suddenly stopped and looked at each other in horror: we hadn't propped the lady up - what if she regurgitated and choked to death, or rolled onto her stomach and suffocated?  We rushed back to the bedroom and stood outside, hoping to hear sounds of snoring. We heard nothing. Very, very carefully, we cracked the door open and listened intently - and heard nothing. It was too dark to see whether she was still on her back or had rolled over. What to do? Creep up to the bed and risk giving her a heart attack if she came to while we were hovering, or leave her alone and hope for the best?

We decided to get a closer look. Making myself as tiny as possible, I crept into the room, close to the bed. I could hear nothing. I couldn't see her chest rise and fall. I couldn't be sure how she was lying. Completely panicked, I scurried out.

What to do, what to do? We had no idea. I know - let's call my mother! She’ll know what to do! We called, told our frantic story: should we call the ambulance, should we risk giving the lady a heart attack, could we have accidentally killed her, what now?

"Leave her alone," Mom said. "She's surely been in this state before. If she's alive, you'll know soon enough; if she's dead, she'll keep 'til morning." Of course.

Not long before her 80th birthday, Mom mentioned she has a list of things she'd always wanted to try. “Really," I said, "like what?" "Well, go on a safari," Mom said, "but I've done that." 

What else? I wondered. "I've always thought I'd like to go zip-lining," Mom said.

 Zip-lining? Really! That made that year's birthday present simple. On the day, there we were at Mt Sunapee, the whole family and one of her friends. My niece, pregnant with bun number 1, couldn't go, and Mom's sister, who's smarter than the rest of us, wouldn't go. They held down the picnic baskets until the rest of us returned. We hoped.

Brother attached a video camera to Mom's helmet, so we now have an audio of Mom, who had never said a bad word in her life, shouting, as she jumped off the first platform: "O (cussword) O (cussword) O (cussword), I can't believe I'm doing this!"

Neither could I.

I'm not sure what we're giving her for this year's birthday - if she doesn't mention something else on that list of hers, maybe a nail gun.

Originally published in The Concord Monitor, October 12, 2016, as “That Time Mom Rode A Zip Line.”