The call

I’m not even out of our sub and I’m dialing.

“Good morning, you flip-flop wearing slut!” says Mom, recognizing me on caller ID this morning.

“Good morning Mudder!” says me.

I talk to my Mom every day during the 15-minute drive to the train station.

While I was down with that damnfuckshithell hurty back thing, I missed a whole lotta work and a whole buncha holiday festivities, but what I missed most was talking to my Mom every morning.
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“I forgot to put on deodorant yesterday,” I confess in our Wednesday morning call. “I just forgot. So around three, I smelled like a greasy Italian sausage with onions. The smell was so bad it gave me a sore throat.”

I tell her this story so that I get to hear the Best Sound on the Planet: Mom’s laugh. Her laugh makes me laugh and then it’s hard to stop.
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“Good morning, my little CUPCAKE!” she says most mornings when she’s not commenting on the blog.

“Good morning my little MUDDER!” I say to that.

These are the silly fun familiar rituals we all have and we all live for.

What are yours?
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She gives me family updates and news from the neighborhood where I grew up. I tell her what’s going on with work or home or friends or Gromit.

Sometimes we gossip.

“You have to promise me you WON’T TELL ANYONE,” she starts. “PROMISE.”

She knows this will crack me up completely because a) she knows I would never tell anyone and b) she still has to say it.

I think it’s her way of signaling for me to really pay attention because what follows surely will be a Very Good Story.
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“If you can’t feed it, clean it,” said my Mom, describing her Mom. “That was her philosophy.”

From my smelly sausage armpit story, our conversation naturally turns to scrubbing things and that’s when she tells me about Grandma and Porky. I’d heard about Porky before, but today there are different details.

“Your grandmother used to go out there with a scrub brush and a bucket and wash that pig,” says Mom. “Then one day your grandfather put the bucket over Porky’s head so he couldn’t see where he was going and they lead him up a ramp into a truck. Then we had bacon.”

“Animals with names shouldn’t be killed,” I say, suddenly sad for a dead pig who last saw the live side of bacon 50+ years ago.

“Have you had a pork chop lately?” says Mom. “Everything dies eventually.”

“Yes, but not everything dies and gets eaten on a sammich,” I say.

And it’s just an ordinary Wednesday in the middle of January but I know it’s going to be a great day because it started off laughing with my Mom.
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I am listening to: Israel K – Somewhere Over the Rainbow
I am reading: OutlookSoft webcast invitation
And I am: Relaxed