Hugh Neeld: The Curmudgeon Report

We didn’t observe Mother’s Day much at my house when I was growing up. Mom thought it was “sentimental hogwash” (her words). She would even send notes so that I could be excused from participating in classroom Mother’s Day projects—card making, picture drawing, poem writing and the like. She found it maudlin and sappy and didn’t want “all that fuss.”

Needless to say, our family didn’t go out for dinner on the second Sunday in May, nor did we bake a cake. I feel that mom thought “if nothin’ says lovin’ like something from the oven,” she wouldn’t have us two kids.

Of course, in later years, when granddaughters became a part of her life, she mellowed somewhat, and even looked forward to Mother’s Day. She’s been gone a long time now, but I still remember looking in vain every year through all the saccharine Mother’s Day cards (which were all you could ever find) knowing there wasn’t a single one that would be appropriate for her unique style of mothering.

You can have your lacy, soft, cookie-baking mom with her hugs and lullabies. In some of my happiest memories, my mother dispensed tough love before tough love was even cool. My father was a railway postal clerk, and gone from home for days at a time, and she had to serve as both mom and dad for me and my younger brother. Not an easy job.

When it came to taking care of myself with other kids, my parents' views differed. Dad believed you had to look out for yourself, period. Mom, on the other hand, felt there were circumstances under which a little motherly intervention was called for. So, until Dad got off the road and started spending more time at home, her rules prevailed.

In the first grade, an older kid who lived next door selected me as his prime target for bullying, and sent me home in tears more than once. Mom carefully grilled me in each instance. (I think she felt I was embellishing my accounts of the assaults unduly.) Finally, when I brought home a black eye as proof, she marched right over to his house as I watched out the window. When she returned, she had a satisfied look on her face.

“I don’t think he’ll be bothering you any more,” she said. And he didn’t.

Later she told me she’d rung his doorbell and told his surprised mother that she needed to speak to him privately. She pulled him out of his mother’s hearing range, then leaned her face close to his like a drill sergeant.

“When you see Hugh Earl (swear to God, that’s what I was called) walking down the street,” she said, smiling, “I want you to cross to the other side. If you see him walking down the hallway at school, you flatten yourself to the wall and let him pass. Otherwise I’m going to hammer you into the ground. Do you understand me?”

The exact wording varied with each retelling of the story, but I was thrilled each time. It was so Dirty Harry-like.

Even with her occasional intervention, mom believed children should fight most of their own battles. When I was a teenager, I called her one time on an out-of-town pay phone while on a beer bust with friends to tell her that I had no idea where I was. She suggested that I take a cold shower and get some sleep, then basically hung up on me.

On the other hand, it was nice to have a mother who was tireless in your defense against the evils of the world—bullies, school teachers and such, with all the charm and warmth of the head nurse in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Childhood is a vale of tears—always has been, always will be. This Mother’s Day, I’d just like to thank my mother for helping me reach adulthood in something other than a body bag.

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A question to ponder:

Would life be happier if we could be born at age 80 and gradually approach 18?

putterhn@suddenlink.net

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Hugh Neeld is a freelance columnist for TylerPaper.com.

Hugh Neeld is a freelance columnist for TylerPaper.com.
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