Hot Lips and High Standards

My Mom entered the world in the 1920’s. This period was a time of economic depression on a high level. My Mom’s blood father was a womanizer, so he left my beautiful grandmother to go out into the “female playground” when my Mom was five years old. My grandmother, Lola rented out half of her house with her little daughter, my Mom. There were two gentlemen that rented the back half of the house and one of these gentlemen fell for Lola. Fortunately, for my Mom this wonderful gentleman whom I knew as Pappaw married my grandmother. Pappaw loved my Mom as if she were of his own blood. This pair developed a solid home and a relationship that my Mom had to look up to that lasted for over fifty years. My Mom did not let the abandonment of her father jade her feelings toward the male sex. She always retained more male friends than female and Never lacked male attention. Later in life when my Mom had married and had three girls of her own, she would sometimes take my sister Cheryl and her friend out in our red Ford convertible and drag main street where we lived in Sidney, Nebraska. My Mom used to get asked out on more dates than her young companions, but my Mom would give her great big smile and simply say,” no her one and only was at home.” She would flirt but it was all innocent and people loved to be around Mom! Mom became one Resilient human being and there were many times in our growing up years that she was forced to deal with emergencies on her own as my Dad was a Petroleum Engineer and often would be out on a well location. Inevitably, something would always go wrong with one of her three offspring while he would be sitting on a well. She was a capable person and dealt with these urgent issues without the use of cell phones or internet which were unavailable at the time. Mom was a Kick Butt kind of gal. Her motto being “Don’t let them know they got you down!” Just smile and laugh it off. Laugh my Mom did! Sometimes she would find humor in things you would consider an inappropriate time to laugh such as when we would do something dumb that would end up in us getting banged up somehow. One such incidence comes to mind when I was on the treadmill and it was going a little faster than I could keep up with and I landed face down on top of it missing my footing by miles. My ego was injured and a few other rather unmentionables as well. My Mom was busting up with laughter and my sister Gail was laughing as well while I lay there unattended broken and shaken.

My sister’s and I learned to deal with life with a great sense of humor as eccentric as it might be to those that do not understand or quite know how to take us.

My Mom could batt her huge baby blues and melt the metal of many obstinate characters that crossed her path. Believe me she really knew how to work those beautiful blue eyes. She could also be a steel-edged sword with a fiery temper which she seemed to have inherited from her own mother. You did Not want to cross my Mammaw or Mom. Mom’s fire could send me running to my Dad for sympathy in a heartbeat and sometimes with that heart beating rapidly in fear.

The bonfire of my mother’s soul also made her a fierce “Lioness Predator” who could eat the insides out of any creature daring an attempt at devouring or preying on her cubs. The claws would appear and she could snap you like a twig with her teeth of sarcasm.

Mom was hilarious as I mentioned before and there were times you would have to excuse yourself to “Go Pee” because her iconic wit had hit its target with an archer “bulls-eye” precision.

One time my Mom impersonated the character of Hot Lips A Hula Hana (Remember Mash) to send an overly confident young man off his guard. She certainly had him bumfuzzled and he did not know if he was coming or going. He asked who she was as he was certain of misdialing the number and she informed him that she was Hot Lips A Hula Hana and “if you come too close, I will just melt the paint right off your buttons.” She never did reveal her true self to him. This young man was quickly on the phone with her partner in crime asking who in the Heck was that woman. This sense of humor and her stark wit contributed greatly to the “Boss Mom” she was.

Behind every great man is a great woman and my Dad was the straight man to her comedic sense which often garnered her the control she needed to keep our sometimes-chaotic atmosphere on a straight path. Believe me this was no easy feat as my Dad was a character in his own right.

Ultimately, she also taught us to have faith in a being higher than ourselves. She had a deep spiritual faith in a superior being which in my family we call God. She advocated for reaching for something Higher than Yourself. She affirmed this in her personal experiences with this Higher Being which she relayed to us a short time before passing from this life. Judging from the Incredible White Light that shone on my Mom’s face after she passed and grew brighter while lying in state, I Do Not Doubt for One Moment the Truth of Her Explanation!

Late in my Mom’s life everyone knew my Mother by the name of Goose -Goose. This came about because she and my Dad had gotten inner tubes shaped like animal critters for their grandchildren. One was a tiger and thus my Dad became Grandpa Tiger, and my Mom became Goose -Goose. She was always introduced to everyone with the name of Goose -Goose and even the doctors and nurses who cared for my Mom were introduced to her as Goose -Goose. Even when my Mom was on her last days she was still flirting with the doctors and batting her baby blues. She would make them laugh and forget their cares even though at that point she had many of her own cares and was struggling to keep on going. My Mom Never for a Moment lost her sense of charm or Humor.

My Mother was “The Boss Mom” because from her we learned to be Highly Resilient, Deeply Spiritual, and Incredibly Humorous.