Goldberg: Groundhog Mother's Day

By Tod Goldberg

With the passing of Mother's Day, my slate is clean. I've made amends for writing about my mother selling fetish items on eBay, for writing about all the odd men she dated during my childhood (who am I kidding? She dated them when I was an adult, too) and for continuing to live in the house she rented down the street from mine. A nice frilly card, a warm hug, the promise of a fancy lunch and a movie with her favorite son and WHAM, all was forgiven.

So. Let's get to work on next year.

My mother travels a lot. She goes to Washington, D.C., to visit her on-again, off-again boyfriend (it is hard to tell the daily status of this because it is sort of like a Choose Your Own Adventure soap opera...depending on certain actions or inactions, a break-up or marriage proposal could be on the table for discussion); she goes to Seattle to see her mother; she goes to Sun Valley and Hawaii because she can. Each of these trips is coupled with me taking her to the airport and picking her up, because she lives next door and because I'm a good and decent son...but mostly because she lives next door. The act of taking her to the airport is fairly innocuous, owing mostly to the early hour of departure she usually has and my inability to form words or memories before noon.

The pick-up, however, has become my personal Groundhog Day, without the Andie MacDowell payoff. It's not as if terrible things happen, or really remarkable things, but instead each return is met with another bizarre circumstance that curtails my life by at least two hours. So my therapist was right, I have mom issues:

Returning from Hawaii. I'm standing outside the security gate and see my mother lugging forward. She has four carry-on bags, a neck brace, a bag filled with Power Bars, six bottles of water and is talking on her cell phone. When she sees me on the other side of the security gate, she drops all her bags onto the floor and says, "Can you come get these?" I take a step toward her, setting off a massive array of flashing lights and sirens and am met by a hulking security guard who tells me to "Back away! Back away!" as if I'm about to storm Air Force One. I back away. My mother stands there. "I need help carrying these bags," she says. I take an inadvertent step forward again, setting off the alarms again and likely ensuring lifetime audits from the IRS and constant "random" cavity searches on international flights.

Returning from Washington, D.C.. My wife and I arrive 20 minutes before the plane lands, affording us ample time to greet my mother, get her bags and return home for an exciting night of carnal and/or sadistic lovemaking. We might do some role-playing. Who knows, you know? Anyway. Her plane lands. Hundreds of passengers deplane. The pilots, the in-flight hookers and asexual gentlemen pulling small luggage bags stream past. A man to whom you could safely prescribe the legal definition of the term "gimp" comes ambling by. The lights of the airport began to dim. My libido dims along with it. "Maybe we should call her cell," my wife says. "Maybe she missed her flight." I call her. It rings several times. I hear her voice, but not on the phone. No, in fact, it is echoing along the concourse. I hear her say, "Hold on, I've got another call," and then she answers her cell.

"Mom," I say, "where are you?"

"I'm talking to Chuck on the other line," she says. Chuck is her quasi-boyfriend. In Washington, D.C. Where she just flew in from. Where her plane landed from 30 minutes ago. "Can you call back?"

Returning from Sun Valley. I'm running late. After jumping out to an early 21-7 lead in the Madden 2004 Super Bowl, Rich Gannon goes down with a head injury and Marques Tuiasosopo throws two interceptions in the third quarter and I'm forced to go into the hurry-up offense in hopes of catching the surging Eagles off-guard and, well, I totally forget to pick my mother up. I call her on her cell phone. "I'm on my way," I say and she says not to worry, she'll be in baggage claim. This is not good news. Whenever I meet my mother in baggage claim, she either has no idea where her luggage is or she's made a new friend on the plane who is writing a book and would love it if I could give him/her some advice. Happily, this time my mother is merely standing in the middle of baggage claim wearing a full-length mink coat, smoking a cigarette and talking on her cell phone. Ash falls from her cigarette and she knocks it off her furred arm with an absent shake.

"Mom," I say, "stop smoking! You could burst into flames."

"I got cold," she says. The temperature is about 65 degrees, though the group of rather rich-looking, silver-haired men she waves goodbye to don't seem to notice.