It's Mother's Day and I'm in the Doghouse

-
The three brothers and our parents the day
our mother graduated from grad school.

Mother’s Day. I know the drill.

STEP 1: Buy Card. CHECK.
STEP 2: Sign card. CHECK.
STEP 3: Mail Card. Aw, shit!

Now Meatloaf said, 2 out of 3 ain't bad, but he never met my mother. I’m in the doghouse for sure. Which, I suppose id better than ending up in the woodshed.

I would ask my brothers for help. But the youngest, Vernon, is the perfect son. He’s some sort of saint, I swear. (He takes after our dad.)

I used to go to my parents for Mother’s Day, but one year it took me 4 hours to get there and 5 to come home. I hate the George Washington Bridge!

So I started sending flowers to cover my absence. But there was always a debacle. One year, they delivered the flowers in a broken case. I called to complain and the florist sent out a second set of flowers—with NO VASE. I called to complain again. Yep, they delivered more flowers but no vase was to be seen. Another year, another florist. This time they delivered the flowers to the wrong apartment and as they had a signed receipt, they refused to redeliver. My mother called and said you know Vernon always sends beautiful flowers and there’s never a problem. I gave up sending flowers.

Then there is my older brother, Michael. While he’s not perfect, he is the father of my parents only grandchild. And that as we all know is a get out of jail free card.

So, I must ask you dear readers to take to the comments and plead my case for me. Explain to my mother I’m basically a good son (maybe thrown in “and a brilliant writer,” for authenticity?)

 Thanks and Happy Mother’s Day to all.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Catching Up With...Stacey Thomas, the Philadelphia Wedding Chapel

-
Image
If you read this blog regularly, you know that I recently married my longtime partner (see Musings Stanley (left) and me with Stacey Thomas of a New Husband, June 29, 2014 . Ever since I was a kid, I dreamed of marrying some bright prince. And as a writer of gay romance, I’ve written gay weddings into two of my books, brilliant, extravagant affairs both. The wedding in What Binds Us ,  included a groom on horseback and “Ten thousand pale pink roses—an entire crop from Holland flown in that morning,” while at the comparatively simpler wedding in Unbroken “it seemed everyone in the world was there” including a flock of startled peacocks. Yet, when it came to my own wedding, panic set in. I didn’t know where to start. I knew I didn’t want to get married in a church and I knew there wouldn’t be hundreds, or even dozens of guests in attendance. In desperation—at that point we only had two weeks to get married on our 17 th anniversary—I goggled “weddings in Philadelphia.” The P...
Read more

Notes From an Old Man: Old

-
Image
Old. A word innocuous enough, and certainly useful at times. We’ve all heard it and used it and read it without any particular feeling. But recently the word became attached to me and… whoa boy …I have feelings. It started last year when I found myself suddenly unemployed. Being one to pick myself up and dust myself off and get back on the horse that threw me, I mentioned to a retired friend that I was looking for a new job. “Aren’t you too old to get a new job?” she asked. “No,” I answered, probably somewhat cockily. After all I was a catch . I have decades of experience and there is practically nothing in the arena of corporate communications that I hadn’t done, or experienced. I’m an award-winning fiction writer, for God’s sake! Then of course, my friend turned out to be the frickin’ Oracle at Delphi . I climbed off my high horse, decided to focus on my writing and got a job that would allow me to do just that. Pretty quickly the young people there attached “Mr.” to my name, ...
Read more

A Fatherless Father's Day

-
Image
Max as reluctant to let Dad go as we were. I remember the accident as if it was yesterday. I had been living in Washington, D.C. for three years. That particular morning, a Saturday, I was running late for work. It was a gray, wet morning at the edge of Winter. Heavy rain, like molten white gold, fell from an aluminum sky as I blazed along at 80 mph. A gray car merged onto the roadway from the right, then proceeded to move into my lane without signaling. The car was moving so slowly it looked like it was moving backwards. I pressed the brakes hard, pumping steadily with increasing pressure, my right hand tight on the gearshift ready to down shift. Realizing collision was inevitable, I glanced at the speedometer: 60. The impact sent my little car spinning towards the concrete divider separating west-bound traffic from east. The world seemed upside down. I remember thinking, I’m going to die and I never got to be friends with my father . I glanced up at the sky, oddly unafraid,...
Read more