funny, isn't it?
by jeanne charters

Boy oh boy oh boy oh boy … it’s Mother’s Day month!
That means I will receive beautiful cards from all corners of this country telling me that I am a swell mom. Some of them say that I am a best friend as well. Those are my favorites.

Motherhood is a pretty profound subject, and I need to reflect a bit on what material to share with you, dear reader. I have lots of experience on this subject. I have been a granddaughter, daughter, mother and grandmother already in this lifetime, so I should have some pithy pearls with which to dazzle you, it seems. Okay, let’s go.

I never really knew my mother’s mother. Nellie Kelly Gibson was dead long before I was born. Judging from her picture, she died, I think, of weariness. There she is, a thin woman with dark hair and light eyes just like mine, surrounded by 9 children ranging in age from 2 to 20. My mother was the youngest and was only 3 years old when both her parents passed on.

Nellie’s mother was born in County Cork, Ireland, and came over on one of the hell ships from that dear country in the mid 19th century. It has always confused me that so many Irish starved when the potatoes rotted. After all, they had an entire ocean full of fish. However, the people of Eire are notoriously stubborn. (Just ask my husband.) They considered it a step down to eat anything but potatoes. Funny, isn’t it? I love potatoes but can’t have them because they are not part of my present high-protein diet. Poor Nellie would turn in her grave. Her granddaughter won’t eat potatoes and practically lives on fish!

My dad’s mom, Annie Hackett, lived with us back in Ohio. So did her sister, Nell O’Neill. Nell was a real humdinger of a grouchy, old maid aunt. I had to share a room with her, a fact we despised equally. She had one glass eye which she kept in a glass of water between our beds. Many nights I wakened to see that eyeball staring at me from the glass. I believe that this was the inception of my love for horror movies.

My mother, Dorothy Jean Gibson Hackett, was one tough lady. She never stopped trying to control me, her only child, until she lay broken and dying in a nursing home. That’s when I could finally relax my defenses and love her. It’s peculiar. My 4 daughters remember her as the ideal grandmother who put pie tins they filled with mud into her cavernous oven. Then, one hour later, she would remove perfect, crispy apple pies. I think that Dorothy realized that the sheer energy required to control 4 strong-willed little girls was beyond even her considerable powers, so she decided to just love them with all her heart.

This brings me to the daughter part. I have four of them, now all grown up and mothers themselves. They live in California, Maine, New York and North Carolina.

We reunite once each year, usually in Maine or in North Carolina. This year, they’re coming to Asheville. We will make a rule that there be no talk of George W. Bush or war because our views are polar opposites. I don’t want to get kicked out of another restaurant the way we did two years ago in Ogunquit, Maine, after a particularly loud discussion about Bill Clinton’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

Last year, they came to my new home in Asheville and brought all 10 grandchildren. It was wonderful but hectic. Frankly, my daughters are much better mothers than I was. I made many mistakes. Somehow, miraculously, my daughters learned to walk and talk and each became well educated. They can all support themselves; and, to my knowledge, none of them has as yet been indicted for any major crime, though I was worried when one of their husbands was caught in a libidinous e-mail relationship. I wasn’t sure who would be the murderess; his wife or one of her sisters.

So, here it is Mother’s Day. When I think of my mother, I remember a time while I was living in New Jersey and she came to visit. We went to Manhattan to attend a play called “Lenny”. We were in the third row. At one point in Act 2, 3 plastic cubicles opened to reveal 3 well-endowed young men in full frontal nudity. I was embarrassed to be sitting next to my grey-haired Catholic mother in the darkened theater. I should have remembered who I was dealing with. She said, “Jeanne, did you happen to bring opera glasses?”