So, this thing is about my life, but not really. I think my life is just an example - something you can use to relate to your own life experiences. Anyhow, I was going to start with more recent things but then I thought I should start from the beginning and THEN I thought - what the hell! Let's start before the beginning - of me, that is.
Some time in the winter of 1970, my mother was pitching a fit because my father would't drive her to church. Never mind the fact that there was a blizzard outside with three-foot snow drifts covering grand sheets of ice and that my mother was 8 months pregnant and wearing four-inch high heels. Of course, if she were a normal 8-month-pregnant mother-to-be, she would at least be wearing boots but MY mother didn't own any boots. Today, she has one pair of boots which I think she has worn maybe three or four times since she bought them about five years ago at the tender age of 70.
So back to the "pitching a fit" part. Yes. She was having a scream at dad who barked back at her in his bad English, telling her that even the busses and subways weren't running so why the hell should he risk his life to take her to church when he wasn't even Catholic! It's a kind of logic that my father has. It is not so clear, but somehow you can get the idea.
That was the end of the discussion.
Whenever my father said something like that it was like a direct blow the the Pope's kisser - a smack right in the face of everything my mother believes in. My father is Estonian, and an iffy Lutheran at best. (Actually, he became Catholic years and years later, but that's a whole other story - so I won't get into it now.) When my mother's need to go to church - be it for Sunday Mass, a wedding ceremony, a funeral, random events that church-going women in the neighborhood might have casually mentioned making my mother feel hellbound if she didn't at least try to attend, whatever - wasn't met and it was humanly possible to get there, then my father sure as heck better have gotten her there or there was going to be H-E-double hockey sticks to pay. Well this particular time, it didn't work. Mom kicked up a stink bigger than a Shaquille fart but Dad just went to bed anyway.
The only logical thing for my mother to do was to put on her high-heels and plow her giant pregnant belly half a mile to Our Lady of the Assumption Church. The kids didn't have to go. They were excused because it could be dangerous for teenagers to go out in the snow, but pregnant women know no fear in my mother's house. Anyway, she was on a mission for God and so He would surely protect her from the Abominable Snowman or whatever else might be in store for her.
The best thing is she made it all the way to the top of the church steps where she was greeted with a locked door. She was only slightly annoyed until she started down the stairs and slipped on a cake of ice hidden beneath the sails of snow lining the steps. When she found herself in the emergency room with a broken elbow and a bruised backside, she started to think that maybe God would have forgiven her for not going to Mass that particular Sunday. She never got that God might have been telling her not to be so stubborn. She still hasn't gotten that part. She's probably one of the most stubborn people I have ever known, next to me. I'm not sure what her excuse is for being that way, but I always blame my problem(s) on the fact that I was dropped on my head before I was even born.
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