The Mother Ship is calling me home

This column arrives after Mothers Day on purpose. It’s more real life to be late in an ‘Owed to Mothers’ tribute …it just fits.

“Hey, Mom will understand that we didn’t have time to buy a gift, get a card or call.”

Because Mom’s are the Queens of Understanding.

Now for me, the understanding from my Queen began when I was delivered to this planet by way of spaceship. Aliens left me on my parents’ doorstep and my mom, being the Saint she is, agreed to raise me as her own. It’s the only plausible explanation as to how she wound up getting stuck with me.

My mother is tiny framed and 5 foot 1 inch tall (and I think I’m being generous); I’m, how do they say it, “big boned” and 5’9”.

My mother maintains a weight that is within 10 pounds of my birth weight. She exercises everyday, lifts free weights, dabbles with yoga and tai chi and took golf lessons when I was a kid.

I spent grades 7, 8 and 9 in a full length leg cast due to a horrifying, death defying, cross country skiing incident. I’m still nervous around low grade inclines.

Her hands are small and delicate; I have man hands – I mean real catchers mitts. Her nails are filed beautifully to a sensible length and lightly coated in a pastel polish; mine are bitten, jagged, ridgey and I don’t care and she knows it.

There are a few early school pictures of me in a dress. Ick. It just wasn’t my thing. I preferred pants, sloppy shirts and hair tucked behind my ears in a Marsha Brady style.

Girly pom pom hats she would buy were thrown out at school. Sparkling white running shoes were left behind the wheels of the car so my dad would drive over them and scuff ‘em to a wearable condition.

When I was a teenager, my mother would head out to work each day in a classic pleat skirt, silky hose, stylish high heels, crisply ironed blouse and a smart, tailored jacket. Her hair would be gently streaked, makeup carefully applied and accessories perfectly selected.

I would race passed her in a Van Halen t-shirt, black eyeliner and a green lumber jacket with rock band pins plastered all over it.

Our home was impeccable; she whipped up healthy balanced meals after her Mary Tyler Moore day working for Mr. Grant, she took English Literature classes at U of T, volunteered, and smiled through every baton lesson, hockey practice or baseball game.

I live out of laundry hampers, praise the gods for inventing microwaves, take my courses online and sit at the kids’ practices distracted by the thousand things running through my brain.

And you know what my mom has told me pretty much every day of my life? You’d think it would be to pull it together or offer some tip on how I could do better. Nope. She has always told me she’s proud of me. Huh? That she loves me and doesn’t know how I do it. She says I’m smart, talented and these days, that I’m a great mom. Me!!! Ratty haired, broken nailed, sloppy, chunky, frumpy, messy, whiney, moany, her polar-opposite me!!

OMG - You don’t think she’s being mind-controlled by my Martian parents, do you?


Alison Davies is a humour columnist for the Trentonian. Her articles and essays have appeared throughout North America. Read her business blog at www.morebusiness.ca

The Fountain of Youth for $19.95 plus installation

A horrible thing has happened since my last column. I’ve turned 44. Whew – I just got chills. The occasion was marked with a cake boasting two very big, neatly lined up 4’s. Nice touch. I suppose it was in case the number had slipped my mind or my eyesight had started to fade (which it has, sniff sniff).

To me, 43 seemed so 40-ish. Forty is after all, the new black. It’s chic and hot to be forty. Its “I am woman, hear me roar” time. You’re pre-belly fat, pre-menopausal and post diaper changing – hooray for 40!

But it’s a short lived celebration.

Once you get to your mid forty’s, the party is over and it’s less about pro-living and more about anti-aging.

Itchy, my ‘man in the middle’, is an advertising junkie so I’m used to hearing things like:

“Mom, Mom. A store on TV said if we buy one pair of shoes from them, they will give us another pair of shoes for like 50% off. Fifty percent off, Mom – that’s almost free.”

Well lately, he has shifted his attention to personal care products for me:

“Mom. You’re gonna love this. I just heard about this cream that you wipe on your face everyday for a week. Then you wipe it a few times during the next week. And then all of your wrinkles will be gone and you will be young again. It would be like a miracle for you.”

Ah, the tender surroundings of a house filled with boys.

What about the old fine wine/cheese theory? That you get better with age?

Clearly the product manufacturers aren’t winos or old cheddar fans because they’re really pushing these age-defying, age-defending, age-fighting wrinkle erasers. We’re encouraged to rejuvenate, repair or replace whichever of our parts is not going along with the ‘anti-aging’ program. Aren’t we throwing the grown up, wrinkly baby out with the Epsom salts bath water, here?

I mean, what exactly is the ‘anti-aging’ movement? I’m all for slowing down the hands of time but I’m not exactly anti aging. The alternative to aging seems rather grim.

The Dream Lips Age Defying Plumping Serum offers immediate plumping results. So does a Big Mac. I just have to figure out how to get it to go to my lips.

Revlon has an Age Defying Concealer with Botafirm. If I were them, I would rename it Butt-o-firm – the bigger the butt, the more it would take to conceal and defy – that’s a money maker.

One series of articles I read about wiping the age slate clean came from a guy that also informs on decorative night lights. That’s it – let’s hide in dimly lit rooms while we treat ourselves to a mud mask guaranteed to restore our youth in less than 10 minutes.

I’m not falling for any of this junk. I am who I am and if nothing else, being in my mid forties (gulp, still kinda hard to say) has taught me one thing:

Don’t fall for all the gimmicks and magic anti-aging potions – just hang out with people who are a lot older than you.