Mommie Dearest

Remember that film "Mommie Dearest" based on the actress Joan Crawford and what a wretched, horrible mother she was? Everyone likes to allude to the line "No wire hangers!" Well, my sister and I saw that flick when we were younger and around that time, I remember we called our own mother, to her face, "Mommie Dearest." Now, I don't recall if we were being facetious or what, but I do know that Mom scolded us for saying it. Well, many, many moons later, I relayed the incident to "Mommie Dearest" and, naturally, she has no recollection of any such occurrence. She conveniently forgets things, but has an amazing way of pulling the most insignificant events out of the past, expecting you to remember them as vividly as she.

That's Silly!

Using the word 'silly' is not a bad thing, right? Well, according to my mother, it is! She equates it, I think, to the word 'dumb' or 'stupid.' I found this out when my 2-year-old daughter was talking to her and said something to the effect of: "Silly Grandma!" Well, I'll be! That set my mom off straight away. She proceeded to yell at my daughter for no good reason! She told her not to talk to her that way. I tried, futilely, to explain to her that 'silly' was not a bad word. She wasn't convinced and I think it still bothers her if my daughter says it. How the heck is she gonna tell me how to speak my own language? The problem is, my mother, if she learned one version of something a long time ago, there's no way to tell her any different. She might be right or close, but she doesn't get the concept of different connotations. Another problem: she interprets American things through Vietnamese culture. You just can't do that. But try telling Mommy Dearest that!

Hair Story

My mother is hairless. What? Well, I mean, she's not hairy. Huh? Okay. She's not bald. But she's not furry either. What I'm trying to say is, my mom doesn't have a lot of hair on her body a la Europeans. Whoops. Hair doesn't grow on her arms or legs. She does not need to shave. She claims to have "Indian" skin. Yup. That's what she calls it.

She does, however, get the occasional SINGLE hair in the armpit area. That's right - one or two hairs that grow in and she notices because they itch. So here's a classic memory: she used to have me or my sister pluck the hair from her 'pits. Yeah.

And because my mother never had the need to shave, my sister and I never learned the art of shaving from her. She insisted that we, being her daughters, had skin like her and that we didn't need to shave. Needless to say, we had to learn about hair extraction elsewhere...