I'm still a Mama's boy!

My mother turned 80 recently. Now, that's not so big a deal when you consider that her mother ... my Nana ... passed at the ripe old age of 99 3/4, so our family figures she's going to be with us quite a while longer. I have to tell you that she is still one of the smartest people that I know ... Watching Jeopardy together is like watching it with Carter Chambers, the character Morgan Freeman brought to life in "The Bucket List". She's also one of the most generous people that I know, a fact that has thrilled all 7 of her grandkids and her 2 great grand-babies. She recently allowed both Joyce and I PLUS Maddi and Chris to invade her Florida Paradise for a week, together, and didn't think anything of it. In case you're missing the point, I think the world of her.

Growing up in my family was a parental challenge. My parents had 4 children, 4 boys to be exact, and with my father being the only Orthopod in Barrie for a number of years, she was blessed with raising 4 boys on her own for portions of every day as my father spent 100 hour weeks putting people back together that had wrecked themselves in one manner or another. I have written previously how different my brothers and I are (click here), so I don't have to repeat that, but you should know that it was a BUSY household and she ruled it "with an iron fist" ... actually, it would be better phased "with a wooden spoon" ... in those days a whack on the backside was not considered a federal offence. Now that I am through the child-rearing phase and into retirement, I can look back on those memories with great wonder and appreciation for her abilities to balance it all.

My parents were the stuff of a Hollywood Blockbuster. They were high school sweethearts ... him the all star athlete and her the head cheerleader ... survived the separation of years of university before reuniting, marrying and starting a family. They stayed deeply in love for the rest of their years until my father's passing in 2006. Letting you in on a secret, when the rest of the world thought my mom would struggle with losing her beau after all those years, my brothers and I were resolute in the opinion that she would soldier on ... we grew up with her and knew how strong she was. She was devastated, grieved, and then dealt with her loss exactly the way we anticipated. She still misses him, each and every day, but she's accepted her fate and has made lemonade out of her lemons.

Growing up, I didn't fully appreciate my mother's incredible parenting super powers. She dealt with the trials and tribulations of day to day life with 4 very active, and at times ignorant, male-types who wanted to "suck the marrow out of life" and experience as much as possible, lest they miss out on something. My parents moved a young family from Toronto to Barrie, bought a place on the east end of town, then decided to choose between purchasing a cottage verses putting in a pool. When the back hoe finished, my mother inherited a large majority of the neighbourhood kids as we made great use of that wonderful pool. When they chose to move across town to the west end, the four of us were delighted that the new house came with a pool and we, once again, inherited the neighbour's kids. I tell you this because it makes her legend all the more incredible as she lifeguarded, fed and often clothed (we always had extra bathing suits) the neighbourhood. In a testament to her super powers, she never batted an eyelash doing it.

Growing up first born with the same middle name as my father, liking the same sports as he shone in at East York CI, and resembling him significantly, the joke in our house was, "you can go to any university you wish ... but we're only paying for Queen's", the same school where my father was a demi-legend. TBH, I really never considered any other university and I hold the memories of those 5 years near and dear to my heart. What does that have to do with my mother? To my knowledge, she never wavered in her support of that decision and she figured out the complicated logistics of my younger brothers as my father expected them to attend as many of my Queen's Football games as they could. They even surprised my one game, enlisting a friend to fly them from Barrie to Lennoxville, QB for a road game at Bishop's U ... I didn't know they were coming and was shocked to see them in the stands. Making time to do all that while ensuring that my brothers were looked after can't have been easy to arrange. I wasn't there, but I'll bet my Nana + Papa (her parents) were left in charge.

All in all, when I take stock of my 56+ years on this planet, I have to admit that I struck gold becoming my mother's child. She is the rock of our immediate family and I love her with all that I am. Enjoy your 80th lap around the sun mom ... And I hope that you have a few left in you yet.