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Memories Of Mama Script

LINDA: When I was six she put me in my first talent contest. She paid for the costume, she paid for the music, and she paid for private lessons. Unfortunately, Wal-Mart wasn’t selling talent that season.

JODI: My friends always had the cutest, most endearing names for their mothers.. “Mama…..Gigi….Nana.” My friend Sharon called her mother “Bubbles” because it made her sound more like a friend. I called my mother “Mt. St. Helens.”

MARY: I’ll be honest. I do a lot of lying. When people talk about their mothers I have to make something up. I mean, there were surely some good times we had together….a pleasant conversation or two, but I can’t I can think of a one. Maybe I’ve blocked everything out. So when the subject comes up I lie. Now I have one of the most loving mothers in the world, but I had to make her up.

CATHY: When I was six she locked me in a closet. I was there for nearly two hours until dad got home to get me out. That was just the week before she took me to the mall and left me there. Twice she put me in her grocery cart then left me in the parking lot. Even at age eight, you can start getting suspicious.

GINA: We were the same person, I swear. Mom and I would get the same thought at the same time. We liked the same food and we even woke up at the same time. I think my favorite memories of her were singing together in church. Duets. No matter what I’d sing, she’d find a harmony. One Sunday I went horribly off key on The Old Rugged Cross so she followed me to my new key. We made it look like the piano player had made a mistake.

LINDA: This is just an opinion…my opinion…but age 8 is too young to be twirling fire batons. . . .especially when your mom has just bombed your head with an entire can of Miss Clairol Extra-Hold hairspray. She always said, “You’ve got to have a big finish, Linda. Something the judges will remember.” They remembered this one. The security crew at the Holiday Inn remembered this one. The fire department remembered this one.

JODI: When mother entered a room, the potted plants would wither. She had this…how do I describe it?...This force with her that just intimidated people. Teachers would call in sick during parent-teacher conferences. When our minister would go to the back of the church to shake the parishioners’ hands after church he’d see mom coming and he’d suddenly get a calling from God to run to his car.

MARY: I was maybe…I don’t know….sixteen…when I realized that my mother didn’t hate me. She just hated everybody. That sounds strong, doesn’t it? We didn’t have words like “bipolar” back then…no “passive-aggressive” or “behavior disordered.” We just called it “mean.” I truly believe that she was in competition with me since the day I was born. I was a cute baby…aren’t we all?...and I was her competition. Besides, I’ve studied “bipolar disorder” and that wasn’t it. There was no “bi” to her personality…she was full-time mean.

CATHY: I remember dad coming home one night when I was in Jr. High. Mom thought a moment then said, “I’m not sure where I put her.” She didn’t actually “put” me anywhere. The closet door had been sticking so she asked if I’d go in there to turn the knob while she oiled the hinges. Then she got a phone call and forgot where I’d gone. Mom didn’t have dementia…she was just a ditz.

GINA: What do I miss most? Mom sitting on the side of my bed and praying with me...every night. And when I got older and got in late, she’d still get out of bed to hold my hand and pray. And some nights…probably the nights I remember most…are the nights she’d just sit there holding my hand and we’d just look at each other. She was praying, but she wasn’t saying anything…just looking at me until I’d fall asleep.

LINDA: So I wore a wig most of my third-grade year. There wasn’t any real flame damage to my scalp, but I had to do two contests with a cancer victim wig and I can remember that the toupee tape would get loose during outdoor contests and I was always afraid the thing would slip off on the last verse of “Give My Regards to Broadway” when I had to do that cartwheel. By the way, that was the extent of my acrobatic ability…a cartwheel…more like a “cart flop” really, but Mom wanted to show the judges that I could do more than sing. And the way I sang I really needed that cartwheel.

MARY: (as Jodi’s mother) I hate Wisconsin Dells!

JODI: Mother planned our family vacations.

MARY: Traffic! You can’t get anywhere and the prices are too high and all you eat are chocolate fudge and cheese!

JODI: She didn’t like fudge.

MARY: And fake Indians! Dear God if I see one more fake Indian selling chocolate fudge and cheese I’m going to have a heart attack!

JODI: Mother preferred nature.

MARY: We’ll go camping! Harold, get the camper ready!

JODI: I can’t remember ever hearing my father talk. I mean, I’m sure he did. After all, he had to say “I do,” at the ceremony, didn’t he? Isn’t that a requirement?

MARY: Move it, Harold!

JODI: I think that Daddy actually grew shorter when he was around Mama. I’m not kidding. He actually lost a few inches in height.

CATHY: My father kept asking Mom keep to keep lists….things she needed to do, places she had to go, where she’d put her children. And she tried…really…but she could never remember where she put her lists. Dad was cool about the whole thing…they loved each other very much and they had the ability to laugh at Mom’s ditzy behavior. Heck, even I enjoyed it when I got older. We always joked that if she ever got Alzheimer’s, no one would ever know.

GINA: Want to hear a good one? Okay, you’re going to laugh, but it’s true. I took Mom to prom. No, I wasn’t a wallflower. I had plenty of dates, but I was dating a guy from out of state and he got mono right before prom. I was crushed…I had the dress and flowers and everything. I was sitting in my room having a pity party when Mom showed up at my door and announced that she would be my prom date. I laughed.

CATHY: (as Gina) Mom, you can’t go to prom.

JODI: Says who? You think I’m too old?

CATHY: Mom….

JODI: Do they still do the Bunny Hop?

GINA: And so she went…. We went out to eat then drove to the high school gym. She spent the night talking to the chaperones and no one ever knew what she’d done for me that night. I was too shocked to be sad. ….and she did not do the Bunny Hop.

MARY: So I created Amanda. She was the most wonderful mother in the world, but just a few little quirks thrown in to make her believable to my friends…and to me. Amanda was partly my Aunt Jessica, and partly the lady two doors down, with just a little bit of the checkout lady at the IGA. The perfect mother. I’d write her letters and sometimes…and this sounds weird…but sometimes she’d write back….in handwriting that looked a lot like my own. When I went to college and we’d be hanging around my dorm room and the subject of mother’s came up, I’d tell them about Amanda. I didn’t call her “mom,” just “Amanda.” The other girls thought this was pretty cool and they envied our relationship. Amanda even sent flowers to me in college. I even…and this is really bad…I even had pictures of Amanda over my dorm desk. She was gorgeous…had one of those faces that kept its youth even into middle age…the girls loved it. They loved Amanda…and they loved me for having a mother like that. And this is amazing….but lots of times….I mean lots of times…it actually worked. I actually enjoyed my relationship with my imaginary mother. I wonder if that’s a sign of mental illness. Too bad…it was good. And there were times when it probably saved me. My only regret is that I couldn’t talk with my make-believe mother on the phone. The floor of our dorm only had one phone…a pay phone right in the middle of the hallway and on Sunday nights we’d have to stand in line to call our moms. I told my friends that Amanda worked on Sunday nights…she was a booking agent for MGM movies…after all, she had degrees in law and marketing.

GINA & (MOTHER): (singing in harmony) There’s a land that is fairer than day, And by faith we can see it afar. For the Father waits over the way To prepare us a dwelling place there.

In the sweet..bye and bye, We shall meet on that beautiful shore; In the sweet bye and bye, We shall meet on that beautiful shore.

GINA: (as “Mother” continues to hum the melody) Mom liked the old hymns. When our church brought in its first set of drums she just sort of sighed, and said, “Well, whatever folks like.” When we got rid of our hymn books and went to overhead projection, she didn’t complain….she just snuck in her own hymnbook in her purse. She said…

(GINA’S MOTHER): (the humming stops) I don’t know what to do with my hands.

GINA: We were Presbyterian so she couldn’t really raise them in the air. But even as Mom grew older, she kept that voice. If you turned your head you’d have thought it was an eighteen-year-old girl singing. We begged her to make a recording but she was too modest. She was the town’s piano teacher for years….hundreds of kids went through our dining room studio but Mom had never taken a lesson herself. She said . . .

(GINA’S MOTHER): God gives you a gift, you use it. That’s all.

GINA & (MOTHER): (singing in harmony) There’s a land that is fairer than day, And by faith we can see it affair; For the Father waits over the way To prepare us a dwelling place there.

LINDA: Actually, queen contests were a relief after the talent shows. A talent show requires talent. In beauty pageants, talent is like sprinkles on your ice cream…nice, but that’s not why you’re eating it. They just wanted a pretty girl to represent them in the state competition. And forget about the mandatory ball gown competition, it’s all about the swimsuit. By age 16, I became an expert on tan lines, underarm cups, tummy shapers, and what brand of Vaseline’s stayed longest on your teeth. Mother became an expert on defensive strategies.

CATHY (LINDA’S MOTHER): Don’t get shoved into the back row.

LINDA: Yes, Mom.

CATHY: Profile. Always give them profile.

LINDA: Okay.

CATHY: Inches…it’s all about inches…They tell you to stand on the yellow line, you inch up…just a bit when no one’s looking, and push your bottom!

LINDA: Mom!

CATHY: Don’t worry about your arms and legs, Linda. The only thing that counts is your bottom.

LINDA: It’s a beauty contest, Mom!

CATHY: And the beauty’s in the bottom.

LINDA: Mom…

CATHY: The bottom. Beauty sinks to the bottom.

JODI: My mother was pure TNT. She blasted her way through PTA meetings, church committees, and then blew out the walls of the country club. But understand me…she was effective. She was very effective. I mean that. She was smart and she was usually right. She was the woman to have on your side as long as you didn’t mind getting your toes crushed. One night when I was about ten I crept in her room while she was asleep. I’d never seen her face when it wasn’t exploding and I wondered if she slept that way. It was…I’m not kidding…she sound asleep but her face was.. (grimaces)

MARY: I hate camping! What a stupid idea, Harold!

JODI: Mama, it was your idea to…

MARY: I didn’t get one night’s sleep in that crowded little turtle shell of an RV….and the mosquitos and the heat and ….

JODI: But Daddy didn’t do….

MARY: Other families book nice hotels…with swimming pools and those little complimentary bars of soap. Why do we have to be so cheap?

JODI: I like to camp, Mama.

MARY: Then marry a Boy Scout. Next year we’re going to Branson.

CATHY: The whole town had stories about Mom. She was an icon. Dad spent hundreds of dollars on gas because of the nights she’d leave the car running in the driveway. She always remembered family birthdays but she often ordered a cake for the wrong child. When she’d put on shoes that matched the whole family celebrated…. But the really cool thing about Mom….she was the most genuinely nice lady I’ve ever known. She was everybody’s favorite.

LINDA: (Cathy’s Mom): You know, I think this is the best cup of coffee I ever had.

CATHY: It was always the best cup of coffee.

LINDA: I’ve never tasted a hamburger this good in my life.

CATHY: And she meant it. She always meant it. Everything she tasted or felt or saw or smelled was always “the best.”

LINDA: I’ve never heard a voice as pretty as yours.

CATHY: Of course Dad always said that everything was “the best” for Mom because she couldn’t remember all the others.

LINDA: Is this the most beautiful day in the world or what?

CATHY: She was like a….how do I say it?.... a fairy… Tinkerbell…always spreading her joyful fairy dust on our days…. Always “up.” Always amazed at the beauty of living, and…

LINDA: I had two shoes when I left the house. I know I did.

CATHY: ….always .. “Mom.”

MARY: She didn’t like my choice of wedding colors..

GINA: Too cutsie.

MARY: She hated my choice of music.

GINA: Bo----ring.

MARY: She disagreed with the church I picked.

GINA: This place looks like a barn.

MARY: And the only thing that made her approve of my husband was the fact that he treated her like a princess and she thought he was flirting.

GINA: At least you’re marrying a winner. The kid is a stud.

MARY: Other people joke about eloping. I was dead serious. I should have been the happiest day of my life, but Mom did her best to make it a nightmare. She was all I could think about.

GINA: Five bridesmaids? Who are you trying to impress?

MARY: It’s my wedding, mother.

GINA: Yes, yes. It’s all about you. God’s knows I should know that by now.

MARY: Mother!

GINA: Do what you want. It’s your wedding.

MARY: Then the RSVP’s starting coming in.

GINA: Good Lord, the whole world’s coming. I’m glad you’re getting married in a barn. But I’ve got one returned with “no valid address.” No wonder! You just put a first name on the envelope! Who’s “Amanda?”

MARY: (smiles)

LINDA: (smiling) I am smiling, Mama! I can’t smile any harder! Mama, my face is breaking! I swear to God, my face is gonna break! (relaxing the smile) I figured it up once. About 2000 miles in gasoline, eight airplane tickets, dozens of nights in a motel…plus meals, beauty junk, music lessons, modeling school and costumes. Then the $150 I won as third runner up in the Kansas City Miss Midwest contest….It comes a loss of around six thousand dollars not including tips. Mama never tipped when we were on the road. She said it was an honor for the waiters to serve a future Miss Universe.

JODI: We were touring the Cysteine Chapel for God’s sake. Standing there looking at Michelangelo’s world-famous ceiling and the Italian guard came up to Mama and whispered “Silenzioso!” Be quiet, woman! She asked for his badge number. “Mama, he doesn’t have a badge. He works for God!”

MARY: She knew the dates of my kids’ birthdays very well. There was nothing wrong with her memory. …but not a card. Nothing. And Mom became the master of the sigh. (sighs) “I suppose we’ll have to have Christmas at your place again.” (sighs) “Are those the same drapes from when you got married?” Yes, Mother. Yes, and yes and yes.

CATHY: She broke her leg on her 50th birthday. She was doing the Hokey Pokey and she hoked when she should have poked. Okay, that could happen to anybody, but a week later she busted her elbow. She watching TV when the phone rang, and when she got up to answer it she forgot she had a broken leg. How can you forget a broken leg?

GINA: True story. My daughter was in an accident. She wasn’t hurt badly, but the car was totaled. We got home from the hospital at one in the morning and Mom called at 1:30. She said that something woke her up and she’d been praying for us. That’s how close we were.

LINDA: “Miss Midwest Aluminum Siding.” (a beat, then) That was it. The sum total of my pageant titles. I came within a flute solo of winning Miss Walleye and nearly took the title for Hereford Queen …until they found out I was terrified of cows.

CONTEST MANAGER/JODI: Ladies, the reputation of the American Wholesalers Association is on the line this weekend.

LINDA: “I pledge allegiance to frozen foods.”

CONTEST MANAGER/JODI: You will observe a strict 10 p.m. curfew.

LINDA: “Observe” means “to look at.”

CONTEST MANAGER/JODI: Absolutely no illegal substances will be tolerated.

LINDA: Unless they make you thinner, keep you awake, help you sleep, tone your thighs or increase your bust size.

CONTEST MANAGER/JODI: Remember: Miss American Wholesaler is the face of our organization.

LINDA: But all the judges look at is your butt. Mama was right. Our hotel room became the staging area. Mom could wash a sequined gown, dry it over the air conditioner and press it between the double mattresses in less than an hour. We often shared the same bed and she kept poking me. She kept safety pins attached to her nightgown in case anything came apart in the middle of the night. And she knew all the angles.

MOTHER/CATHY: Motel Six? You have been chosen to host Miss Bee Pollen next week!

GINA/HOTEL MANAGER: Really?

MOTHER/CATHY: Do you have a deluxe suite?

GINA/HOTEL MANAGER: We don’t have suites.

MOTHER/CATHY: We can rough it. We’ll be in next Friday night.

GINA/HOTEL MANAGER: Uh…the pageant’s not ‘til Sunday. How can she be queen already?

MOTHER/CATHY: Oh, wait ‘til you see her. Just wait ‘til you see her! And have a camera ready! That’ll make a beautiful picture for your lobby…”Miss Be Pollen Slept Here!”

GINA: I’d say, “Mama, tell me about yourself. You never talk about you.” She wouldn’t do it. If you were in the same room with Mama, you were the focus of her attention. My daughter once had a school assignment to interview a grandparent. As soon as Cathy walked into mom’s house my mother began asking her about her day, what she’d had for lunch, what she wanted for Christmas. After almost an hour Cathy gave up and made an appointment to interview my husband’s dad. Mom just wasn’t interested in talking about….Mom. “I haven’t led a very exciting life, she’d say. Raising a daughter like you…that’s been my life.”

MARY: She got to where she’d call three times a day, always with the same complaints… her neighbors were too loud, the furnace repairman was trying to rob her, there was nothing good on television, and the price of groceries was always too high. …none of which I could do a thing about. When I’d tell her that, she’d begin every sentence, “You know, your generation…” I was personally responsible for the Gulf War, nuclear proliferation, global warming, and Barack Obama. That was quite a responsibility. Her sister…a remarkably sane and understanding lady once told me,

JODI: Truth is, she got pregnant with you and she thought it ruined her life. Your mom was quite a looker and all the boys wanted to date her. Well…one night…and with a not-too-great young man…you happened. His fatherhood began and ended one night at the Starlight Drive-In She never saw him again and you were the only thing left to blame. Sorry…I wish there was a sweeter story, but that’s yours. If you take it personally, you’re wrong. She’s still taking him out on you.

JODI: The good news…despite Freud’s warnings, I did not become my mother. My daughter and I have the best relationship you can imagine and I was determined that it’d be cold day in hell before I ever let her near her grandmother.

CATHY: Mom loved to eat out and since she wasn’t really much of a cook, the whole family enjoyed eating out…but when you went to a restaurant with Mother …well, she took some getting used to. We purposely ate in places with short menus because Mom had to read each item…aloud. She liked the sound of food. And if she couldn’t decide what to order….and she could never decide what to order…she’d get up and walk around the dining room, seeing what other people were having.

LINDA (CATHY’S MOM): That looks good. What is it?

CATHY: Mom, please come back to the table.

LINDA (CATHY’S MOM): Excuse me, but is that the halibut? Does it taste fishy?

CATHY: Mother, please.

LINDA (CATHY’S MOM): Really? I can taste it?

CATHY: Oh no!

LINDA (CATHY’S MOM): That is the best fish I ever tasted in my life.

CATHY: Of course it was. It always was. By the time we’d leave, Mom would be friends with everyone in the restaurant. Dad took her on a cruise to Alaska for their 40th anniversary. He said it took all evening to eat. She was faced with 300 diners to meet each evening….and of course she tasted their salmon.

JODI: When your mother is a walking geyser you go through phases. When you’re young you don’t notice it. You assume that all mothers erupt on the hour like Old Faithful.

MARY: They all wear the same gym clothes! And just who’s supposed to pay for that?!

JODI: When you move close to Jr. High you become aware that not all mothers are like this.

MARY: Where do you keep the training bras?!

JODI: Mom!

MARY: Nature is taking its course. Don’t be embarrassed, Jodi!

JODI: Mom, everybody can hear you!

MARY: And your bust in none of their business!

JODI: When you become a teenager you spend a great deal of time hiding under rocks.

MARY: You’re here to pick up my daughter? For what?

JODI: Mother….

MARY: Do you have job?

JODI: Mom, we’re going.

MARY: Do I know your parents? And pull up those pants, young man! And keep them up….

JODI: Mom!

MARY: All night!

JODI: The trick is to make it to adulthood without killing her. Then you can start to laugh a little bit.

MARY: You never come visit.

JODI: That’s because you scare your grandchildren, Mom.

MARY: Those kids love me!

JODI: I make them say that. I pay them.

MARY: You know, for two cents I’d turn you over my knee right now.

JODI: Yeah, but you’d have to get up first and that’d take all night. (They both laugh)

JODI: Mom’s sister died..one of those cancers that give you just enough warning to say goodbye. Mom was devastated.. No, that’s not the word for it. She was nearly destroyed. Mom and Aunt Cindy were a pair… “The Singing Humphreys.” They were only a year apart and they did everything together…they sang together, they planned each other’s wedding. And whenever either of them had a birthday, the trick was to out-surprise the other….male singers in Speedos, a goat tied in our front yard with a birthday sign around his neck, thousands of plastic forks poked into Cindy’s front yard spelling out “Happy Birthday,” and a skydiver with a parachute…I’m not kidding…coming right down outside the church on Mom’s 40th birthday. I’d never seen her like this….not at the death of her own mother…never. It’s a cliché, but Cindy was a part of her. In fact, it was Cindy who went through life soothing the feathers that Mom ruffled. Their friends called them Acid and Ice…Mom burnt and Cindy healed. And that’s when I learned about my father. They’d managed to keep it a secret from the rest of the world but in the days after Aunt Cindy’s death the truth came out. He was the strength of the two. Dad was the one who Mom leaned on…and always had. She’d bluster and blast her way through the day, but he was her comforter after the phone had stopped ringing and the kids had gone to bed. The man…this man whom I’d seldom heard speak….He was her rock. I saw things in him that I’d never seen in my life…that’d I’d never imagined. He held her….he corrected her…he became a father to this child-wife whom the world had imagined to be such a tyrant. … And by learning about my father, I finally got to know my mother. The little girl who just wanted to be loved.

GINA: When Mom died…and it was one of those deaths we all hope for…at home…a little tired but with no pain…just very, very tired. So she sat in her favorite chair at the kitchen table…and didn’t wake up. At the funeral I fully expected her to sit up and apologize to us all for dying on such short notice. And then the cards and letters came in….I couldn’t keep up with them and so many of the names I didn’t even know. She’d touched so many people. But one letter…from Chicago… the Studio LaMour. And a simple inscription: “There’s never been one like you, honey.” Chicago? Studio LaMour? …. After we’d gone through Mom’s things and life had settled down I read the note again. “There’s never been one like you, honey.” What the heck was that? Sometimes the Internet is your friend and sometimes….. The Studio LaMour is one of Chicago’s oldest burlesque houses…a high-class strip joint that’s been a fixture of the city’s hoochie-coochie side since the days of Prohibition. They had a phone number.

MANAGER: Studio LaMour.

GINA: Is uh…is this….

MANAGER: You calling for reservations? Don’t need none, honey. Just show up at nine for the hottest show in Chicago.

GINA: No…no, I don’t need reservations. I received a letter from your theatre after my mother’s death.

MANAGER: Who died?

GINA: My mother. Faye Richards.

MANAGER: Oh! Yeah! Fabulous Faye! That was me sent the note. I seen the notice online. Just wanted to say goodbye to my old pal.

GINA: Your old pal.

MANAGER: Damn. It’d been…what? Forty years? Maybe more. Hell, I lose track. You had quite a mama there, girl.

GINA: Fabulous Faye.

MANAGER: Best damned headliner we ever had at LaMour.

GINA: Every stripper needed a gimmick…a “come on.” You had to do more than take it off…you had to strip with style. The guy told me that Faye’s was the best. She was a musician…a piano player…on a revolving platform. She’d start playing and singing and on every revolution of the piano Faye would take off another item of clothing. The audience couldn’t wait until the final coda. My mother….the stripper. My mother who prayed with me every night…..who went to my prom….who sang duets with me in church…..the burlesque girl. Mom was the last of her generation so there weren’t many living relatives who could help me. It was an old piano student of hers…maybe six months after the funeral…a lady who’d become one of Mom’s best friends, who told me what she knew. It was the Depression, my grandfather was out of work and had nothing to support his five kids… That’s when Mom left home and went to find work with the Chicago Symphony. But nobody needed another piano player during the Depression. When her family started getting letters and money orders from Chicago, it saved them….and always tucked inside the envelope was the program from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra…the list of players was always missing but they knew that Mom must be doing well…she made good money. Fabulous Faye….. I had never imagined…. I had never dreamed…. And I had never loved my mother more. There’s never been one like you, honey.

CATHY: We had no idea that she’d planned her own funeral until the undertaker showed us the notes scribbled on the back of a Wal-Mart receipt. I was blown away. Mom couldn’t organize her own purse. How could she do this? But there is was…the pallbearers, the music, the speakers….Okay, she got her birth date wrong, but everything else…well…I couldn’t believe it. The funeral home said they’d never had The Lovin’ Spoonful played at a funeral but everyone thought it fit Mom to a tee. I’d never seen balloons on a casket, either, but it was a nice touch and so very, very Mom. We followed the hearse to the cemetery….everybody heard the funeral procession. You can’t miss a steam calliope playing “Stars and Stripes Forever” ....and as the weeks went by we started missing things…. The power company calling about another misplaced bill…..onion bulbs planted by mistake in the tulip garden ….ice cream left out over night in a hot kitchen. ….grandchildren left at the county fair And within a year’s time we became a normal family for the first time in our lives. ….. I hated it. (singing) What a day for a day dream, What a day for a day dreamin' boy. And I'm lost in a day dream, Dreamin' 'bout my bundle of joy. And even if time ain't really on my side, It's one of those days for taking a walk outside. I'm blowing the day to take a walk in the sun, And fall on my face in somebody's new mowed lawn.

MARY: She got where she couldn’t take care of herself and she certainly wasn’t going to agree to living with us so we found one of those retirement places. Then it happened…just…it seemed like overnight. I mean, we didn’t even see it coming, it was so fast. She hadn’t been there two weeks when they called to say they weren’t set up to handle her condition. Condition? Being hateful is a condition. I hurried over to see what was going on and…..she didn’t recognize me. There was maybe a glimmer at first but it died as the days went by….nothing. No sign that she knew any of us. And here’s where it gets strange…here’s where it gets ……hard. (a long beat, then) My mother…. who at least in my memory had never said a kind word to me…who had resented my even being alive….My mother…became a beautiful soul. She was friendly. She had no idea who I was but she’d hold my hand and tell me how much she loved me…. “Karen,” she’d say. “You are such a special, special girl.” Karen? “You’ve been so good to me. Please stay a minute longer.” Where was this coming from? What caused….? I don’t know….I guess it doesn’t really matter. My kids….my kids whom I wouldn’t even allow around their grandmother….I brought them out to see her every week. She’d show them how to make paper airplanes and tell us the wildest stories about her days as a moose guide in Canada…a place she’d never been in her life, but who cared? I had a mother. …and goofy as she was some days, I had a friend. And every afternoon when I’d stand to leave she’d grab my hand and hug me.. “Goodbye Leona,” she’d say…or “Esther” or “Linda” or “Mary Jane.” And I’d look into the eyes of a woman I’d never really known and say something I’d been rehearsing all my life. “Goodbye, Amanda.”

LINDA: Even talented, raving vixens like me get too old for beauty contests. I told Mom that God would not approve of her lying about my age on the entry forms. The “God card” always worked on Mom. She retired me from the circuit. I guess I was too much caught up in the whirlwind of motels and hair stylists and dance lessons to realize what was happening. It never occurred to me that Mom was the laughing stock of so many coffee tables and committee meetings. People talked about her….a lot. The world did not approve of Mama. …dragging her daughter all over the country and parading her like some show dog, denying her the joy of growing up as a normal girl. (a long beat, then) And me? I’d heard my friends talk….asking me questions about what Mom was really like…if she pushed me too hard….if I really liked spending my life on runways in swimsuits. I never gave them good answers…I didn’t really know. I’d never lived a “normal” life. But now….now that’s over. Well… “normal” sucks. Sorry. Yes, it was a bit silly…over the top….”excessive.” But I wouldn’t trade a single moment of all that time with Mom for….well…anyone else’s life. I don’t know what motivated Mom and it’s not important…I know who I am… what a life of tiaras and tans and city lights can be…and I’m glad. We did it all together, Mom. You and the almost queen of everything.

Mom came to visit last Christmas…she lives in Arizona now…. runs the Miss Senior Cactus Flower pageant in Phoenix. I didn’t recognize her from her last surgery…tummy tucked, cheeks lifted, butt shaped. .. “The beauty’s in the bottom.”We sat around opening our gifts and my daughter unwrapped Grandma’s… a small, silver tiara. She looked at Grandma and both of them had the same, identical glimmer. Mom…..