My mom -- da bomb

            My mom's birthday is tomorrow and I'll be celebrating long distance with her as she lives in Louisiana. She said she wanted slippers, and so I sent those, but pink house shoes don't quite fill the ticket for someone who's added so much to our lives.

            On this her 82nd birthday, I want to thank my mother for the little things she's given to me and our family over the years.

            A love of music. I remember listening to my mom sing in the kitchen while she was cooking dinner. She had a beautiful voice but I took her talent for granted.

            Mom always sang songs from Broadway shows, and we all love the great musicals – "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers," "West Side Story" and Mom's favorite, "The Sound of Music." I can't hear a Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass song in an elevator and not think of her.

            A love of the movies. On Sunday afternoons, I remember snuggling with my mother and sisters on the couch and watching old black-and-white movies. Not only did I learn an appreciation for the 1950s tear jerkers, but I knew their back stories.

             A love for Elizabeth Taylor. Growing up, I thought we were related to Elizabeth Taylor because of the way my mom talked about the super star. "Oh, poor Liz is having back trouble," she'd say and I'd think one of our cousins wasn't feeling well.

            Mom kept up with all of Liz's divorces, clucking her tongue after each break up. The only time she was ever angry with Liz was after she married Eddie Fisher, believing Liz broke up Debbie Reynolds' marriage.

            She's a fabulous grandparent. Mom, or Siti as she's called, knows every one of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren personally and each one will tell you she doesn't play favorites. Then quietly they'll whisper that they're secretly her favorite.

            She's a fair mother-in-law to all seven of her children's spouses and quietly fulfills the role of mother for my in-laws whose parents have passed away.

            A sense of humor gets you through a lot. My father was the joke teller in the family. He could set up a punch line and deliver the ka-pow to a joke better than anyone. But he didn't have a sense of humor – that talent belongs to my Mom.

            She sees the humor in life faster than anyone else, a reminder that a bit of laughter will get you through the toughest days.

            She walks the talk. Mom goes to Mass every Sunday but loves those of her children who don't follow that example. She taught us that nothing beats having family sit down together for a Sunday meal and no matter what, you always fix guests something to eat.

            At Christmas, if an unexpected guest comes along, Mom goes into her closet, pulls out an appropriate gift and wraps it so our guests won't feel awkward. All of us, in-laws included, now have guest gifts tucked away in our closets.

            Kindness. My mother put up with quite a bit in her life – a bitter mother, a mother-in-law and husband who did their best to cut her to the quick with their criticisms and never having enough money to give her children the material things she wanted them to have.

            But Mom, on your 82nd birthday, I want you to know you gave us everything and more we needed to be successful, kind, thoughtful and happy in life. You gave us your heart, and that gift is the best one any child can have.

            So Happy Birthday, Mom. You're da bomb.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.            

An evening with a singing George Costanza

            As a teenager in the 1970s, I thought I'd heard every Billy Joel song written. I snapped my fingers to "The Longest Time" and bristled with anger at his dig at Catholic girls in "Only The Good Die Young."

            But until I attended the recent Houston Symphony Pops concert, I'd never heard one Joel's most poignant and heartbreaking songs, "And So It Goes."

            I have George Costanza to thank.

            There's no real George Costanza – he's a fictional character on the old "Seinfeld" series, and Jason Alexander played Jerry Seinfeld's neurotic friend, George. Alexander was the guest performer at the recent Pops performance, and he was surprisingly delightful.

            I had no idea Alexander could sing so beautifully until my friend, Pat invited me to attend the concert.

            I thought Alexander might ride on his popularity from the Seinfeld show, tell a few jokes and coast on the coat tails of the talented musicians in the orchestra.

            But from the first minute he walked onto the stage, Alexander was fabulous. He instantly connected with the audience as a fellow lover of the theater and music.

            He performed funny skits involving the audience and he told us about growing up loving theater music and singing.

            In between making us laugh, he'd sing his favorite tunes from Broadway and other artists. All the songs were enjoyable, but he sang one by Billy Joel that struck a chord.

            "And So It Goes" was one I'd never heard, but the honest way Alexander sang it caused me to stop in my tracks.  

            I've always known Joel was a fun and gifted songwriter – "Uptown Girl" is one of my favorite pop songs from the 1980s and "Piano Man" paints a sad picture of people drowning their sorrows in a hotel bar room.

            But I didn't realize how exquisite a poet Joel is until one verse in the song:  "Every time I've held a rose, I've only felt the thorns." When Alexander sang that line with a quiet violin section behind him, the world seemed to stop.

            I found myself remembering the many times I've had something beautiful in my life but didn't realize the wonder I was experiencing.

            Taking my children to the park, I'd worry they'd get hurt so I was always calling out warnings.

Instead of pushing them on the swings until they'd feel like their toes were touching the sky, I'd say "that's high enough," and pull back.

            There are times I want to sing out loud or dance but I don't because I'm worried I'll look a fool. But until I heard that line, I never realized I should take a chance.

            Sure I might look stupid, but I'd be able to have the experience of knowing I got up and danced in life when the music called.

            Sitting in that audience, I pushed away all the nibbling thoughts about the traffic I'd face going home, how much work I had to do the next day and that our bathrooms needed scrubbing.

            Surrounded by the beautiful strings and woodwinds of the gifted musicians of the Houston Symphony, sitting next to my best friend who invited me because she knew I needed a little fun in my life, I realized I was holding a rose.

            The thorns, Alexander and Joel reminded me, were not as important as the beauty of the rose, the wonder of life and the wisdom that comes from letting yourself experience both love and loss.

            I don't think George Costanza would've understood that line.

            But thanks to Billy Joel, Jason Alexander and the Houston Pops, I got it. 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

           

And then the plane slammed into the tower...

            I remember that morning 13 years ago as if it happened yesterday. My sister and I were chatting on the phone early in the morning when she paused and said a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I envisioned a small Cessna tourist plane, one where the pilot had accidentally gotten off course.

            When I arrived at the newspaper, then Managing Editor Bob Haenel had the television on and a video of the burning tower was on the screen. We were all standing in his office, wondering how a pilot could miss seeing the country’s tallest skyscraper.

            And then the second plane hit and we were stunned. Bob turned, looked and us and said “Call the police, the fire department and the hospitals. People, we’re at war.”

            In disbelief, silence and shock, we ran to our desks and started calling local law enforcement agencies. All I could think about, though, was my family. My husband worked in downtown Houston and I was sick at my stomach, wondering if Houston was on the list to be hit.

            My sons were in school, and I prayed their teachers were shielding them from the horror.          As I talked to officials, it was obvious everybody was doing their job, even though our voices held a trace of a tremor. By 11 a.m., all the planes were out of the sky, but we still weren’t sure if more attacks were going to happen.

            When the paper hit the press, I rushed out the door to pick my sons up from school. The drive there was eerie. No one honked their horns, people merged in politeness and there was a silence and respect on the roadways I’ve never experienced since that day.

 

Our Watershed Moments

            Over the last dozen years, we’ve grown numb to shocks. Innocent villages are ransacked in the Middle East, and we barely look up at the television. Terrorist groups are growing, but we turn up our iPods and bury our heads in the sand.

            Our military bases are attacked our own personnel, but we seem to take it all in stride. It’s as if we simply can’t take any more bad news because that news hurts too much.

            But bad news isn’t new. My mother’s generation remembers where they were when Pearl Harbor was bombed, and how the country rallied together. She often talks about the paper drives and air raid drills and going to sleep scared at night.

            My generation’s water-shed moment was when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I was in the second grade and remember distinctly the principal opening our door and telling us to pray for the president who’d just been killed.

I don’t think of that November day very often, but I do whenever I see any president exposed and out in the open.

            This generation’s moment that changed their lives is, sadly, 9/11. Some will remember it as a day when cowards slaughtered innocent people. Others have an image of firemen raising the American flag in the rubble of the downed towers.

            Perhaps, like those of us who’ve grown older in the years that follow tragedies, they will see bravery and solidarity and remember this can still be the greatest country on the planet.

From the Marines on Iwo Jima to a slain president’s draped casket to three New York City firefighters looking up at a dusty flag, the Stars and Stripes remains straight and true.

            And that’s the image I choose to keep.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

The magic of those tall tales

           While looking through a stack of DVDs, I spotted a movie near the bottom, "Big Fish." I can't bring myself to watch it again because the main character is so reminiscent of my late father.

            In the movie, Edward Bloom is a perpetual story teller who embellishes every facet of his life, from his exploits in high school to a daring war-time mission in Japan.

            After years of hearing these Herculean stories, Edward’s son grew to distrust everything his father said because he never knew what was fact and what was fiction. Will resented that quicksand.

            I embraced it.

            Many of my relatives could take an ordinary story and turn it into something magical.

            My Grandmother Marguerite grew up in New Orleans, and she rode the streetcars to work each day. The sounds of jazz outside the windows of the streetcar and the smells of earthy chicory coffee and hot beignets surrounded her every day.

            One night, a strange man got on the streetcar, and sat next to her. He politely said he noticed Marguerite had some blemishes on her face.

            “I have a magical touch,” he told her, in slightly slurred speech. “If I touch your face, you’ll never have another blemish again.”

            Marguerite was always ready for an adventure, so she closed her eyes and told him to go right ahead.

            “And I never, ever had another blemish for the rest of my life,” she told me. The underlying lesson was to sometimes trust in things we can't always see.

            My Grandmother Albedia told stories filled with descriptive details, and I hung onto every detail. My mom said the stories weren’t true, but I didn’t care – she made the ordinary extraordinary.

            It was the same with my father. I don’t think my dad ever told a story that wasn’t stretched or embellished.

            According to my dad, he won hundreds of jitterbug contests, earning enough pocket change to go out on the town every weekend.

            My friends’ fathers went on fishing trips. My dad and my uncle went on a midnight treasure hunt for Pirate Jean Lafitte’s buried treasure.

            For years, my father swore he and my uncle were followed that night and spied on as they dug up all around a huge cypress tree.

            The next morning, all the dirt within a 10-foot radius of that tree was dug up, and if there was treasure there, it was now gone.

            I always thought my dad had made up that story. After he passed away, my uncle said every bit of that story was true.

            Like Edward, my dad surrounded himself with strange and unusual people. There was the person who came to our house at midnight, the trunk full of pre-packaged meat.

            If that wasn’t strange enough, my dad never knew if Darla or Darren was coming – the under-the-table meat broker was a cross dresser.

            Looking at that DVD case, I realized we need story tellers and dreams. They're reminders that our journeys can take unexpected turns at any moment if we choose to look at life through a prism that's a little bit distorted.

            Two weeks before my dad passed away, he said all we have at the end of our lives to keep us company are our memories.

            People like Edward Bloom and my dad teach us many lessons, but the most important is that there’s enchantment in the every-day, ordinary pages of life.

            We just have to peek between the lines to find that magic.