A reminder to call mom on Mother's Day, while she is still around

The other day, the assistant at the veterinarian’s office asked for my wife’s phone number.

My cell phone was locked in the car outside, so I couldn’t look it up. That’s when I realized that I haven’t dialed my wife’s phone number in years. Just pushed the “call” command by her name.

“I do not know the phone number for my wife,” I admitted. “I have become one of those guys I used to scoff at. Please don’t tell her.”

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Then it hit me. If I got thrown in jail that night, and given one phone call, the only person I could dial would be my mom. I knew her phone number off the top of my head. But she can’t post my bail.

My mother died five years ago.

If only I could call her, and she’d pick up the receiver. Every year since her passing has made Mother’s Day bittersweet.

Maternal family history

My grandmother died of cancer on Mother’s Day when my mom was 12.

Dear ol’ grandad had already left the picture by then. He went out for a pack of smokes during the peak of the Great Depression and forgot to go home. I never met him, and he died in the 1980s. Ann – I called my mom by her first name for some reason – frowned upon me ever contacting him in Lakeland. Even when he sent unicycles to me and my three older brothers one Christmas. I think the old goat finally felt guilty about pulling a vanishing act on his family.

Ann never cared for Mother’s Day. She dismissed it as a manufactured Hallmark Holiday packed with false sentiment. It came across as forced and phony to her.

“You should be nice to your mother every day of the year, not just one Sunday,” Ann used to say. “You shouldn’t have to be told to respect your mother. “

Amen, Ann.

Elvis was a hero to most

When I was a teen, Elvis Presley, 42, dropped dead on the bathroom floor at Graceland.

I did not understand why some adults were so shaken or why my tearful barber gave such me an uneven haircut that summer day when the news broke. Wasn’t Elvis the flabby geezer who wore rhinestone-encrusted jumpsuits and crooned hokey tunes to blue-haired old ladies at matinees in Las Vegas? Big hairy deal.

Then something odd happened. Radio DJs began playing the singer’s early songs. We’re talking Sun Records days. Mid-1950s. Raw, unfiltered, overtly sexual. No wonder Elvis was seen as a threat to the white middle class. I jumped headfirst into Elvis, Buddy Holly, Rufus Thomas, Slim Harpo, Jerry Lee Lewis, Howlin’ Wolf, Sam Cooke, Charlie Feathers and on and on.

“You were there in the ‘50s and ‘60s when this stuff was new on the radio,” I said to my mother one day in the late 1970s. “What did you think of Elvis when you first heard him?”

She laughed and answered, “I am surprised I remembered my name during those days, much less anything by Elvis or anyone else. I was raising four hellion boys. I was too busy to notice.”

How bad were we?

My older brother, Robert, a “Bonanza” fan when he was a boy, took a Kennedy half-dollar coin to communion at the Methodist church in downtown Marianna. He and my mother waited their turn to kneel at the altar. An assistant minister went down the line with small chunks of the unleavened bread followed by the minister, who was passing out small shot glasses of Welch’s grape juice. Wine was not allowed in the Methodist church, even though Jesus performed his first miracle by turning water into wine. Go figure.

Robert inhaled the bread and gulped down the shot of Welch’s. He wiped his mouth with his jacket sleeve and loudly said, “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

Then he announced, so the rest of church could hear, “Bartender, get me a whiskey.”

He slammed the coin down hard on the altar.

Ann was mortified. She immediately snatched Robert out of church and beat his butt on the church steps. The swift punishment was not only allowed but encouraged in those days.

That is just one example of our awful behavior. There are many more – our exploding Space Program starring an obliterated chicken, a pet hog-nose snake named Barnabas in the laundry hamper, cherry bombs down the chimney that was already busy with a fire, reenacting the Kennedy assassination with charcoal fluid on G.I. Joe dolls, lighting the farm fields aflame by throwing M-80s at each other, etc.

Why she didn’t kick us all to death, I’ll never know. My mother should be canonized as a saint just for letting us live.

Getting the last word

Ann and I had epic phone chats at least once a week when I was an alleged adult. My mother never told a story from Point A to Point B. The tales meandered, were full of odd tangents, took delightful detours. I usually didn’t mind because she was funny and had a dark sense of humor. They were usually wonderful talks, filled with family history or silly yarns or both, but one week was particularly exerting. My patience ran low.

“Ann, does this story have a point?” I interrupted. “Could you cut to the chase, please?”

There was silence on the line before she spoke very slowly.

“Listen, for nearly 30 years I could never finish a sentence without one of you four boys or your father butting in or talking over me. If I want to take my time telling a story, I will take my time telling a story.”

After that, she talked as much as she pleased.

What I wouldn’t give today is to hear her tell a story at her own chosen speed.

In the meantime, I must go and memorize my wife’s phone number.

Mark Hinson is a former senior reporter for The Tallahassee Democrat. His email is [email protected]

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: A reminder to call on Mother's Day, while Mom is still around