Mother's Day

Well this Sunday is Mother’s Day so I thought I’d give a big shout out to all the moms I know and love - and I’ve known a lot of them. It takes all kinds to be a mom - aunts, cousins, grandmothers, friends.....and no one knows this more than my sis and I. You see my sister and I were not raised by our mom, we were raised by our dad. That doesn’t mean we never celebrated Mother’s Day.....we did....we just celebrated it with our dad. 

My sister and I learned a lot from our dad, aka: TheOldMan. We learned that you’re supposed to stick your head out of a moving vehicle and meow when you see a beautiful woman or a woman with big boobs. We learned how to distinguish a “rug” from real hair. We learned which crayons work best to draw on the tv, to put your postage stamps upside down to protest the war and how to turn ordinary swear words into MegaSwearWords...to this day I know people who still say “Assholio”. 

My dad was in way over his head. He had no idea how to raise two little girls from the ages of 4 and 2. But goddamn if he didn’t try. Our upbringing wasn’t normal, especially in 1969, but then again what's normal? He was a painter (especially nudes) so there were a lot of boobs and crotches all over the house. We looked at Playboy a lot growing up since my dad used them as ‘reference’ to paint his nudes..... ...right. After taking a bunch of us kids to the movies, he took us “hooker hunting” on Sunset Blvd and we actually saw a few! He put us in private school because he didn’t want us to salute the flag. Yeah, it was nuts but we did the ordinary thing too. We had birthday parties at Disneyland and cakes covered with sugar frosting and Cinderella carriages, we had play dates and sleepovers, we had music lessons until I told my piano teacher to fuck off. He showed up to our school plays, took us to Dr. Linker, did carpool and on his turn he’d take us to get popsicles, he taught us to cook, taught us about cars, etc....I never thought our upbringing was bad or wrong and I for one never missed not having a mom since I had a mom....she was my dad.

But the bummer for me now is that TheOldMan is really old. He doesn’t remember teaching me about cars, he doesn’t remember how to make red sauce, he doesn’t even remember telling us to meow at beautiful women. Now I’m his mother and he is my child and that is crushing. These past few years have been especially hard dealing with this new person that is my dad. I try to be patient but inside I'm screaming "Hey! You taught me this!" It's beyond frustrating and deeply painful. And just when I think he's totally gone and I've lost him for good, he pulls an old school dad - like flipping the guy off next to us on the freeway and screaming "Assholio!" And that gives me hope! 

I think this Mother's Day gift will be a Playboy and maybe I'll even take him hooker hunting.

Happy Mother’s Day Dad!