Big Mike: Ma’s Oscar « The Third City

Big Mike: Ma’s Oscar

October 15th, 2009

My mother is in a funk these days. She just turned 88 in August. You’d think anyone that age who wakes up in the morning and still finds herself drawing breath would be immune to the vicissitudes of moods, but no.

This is no mere moodiness, anyway. Ma’s down because she recently learned that one of her grandchildren is suddenly involved in a nasty divorce case. She considers this particular grandchild, let’s call him Rocco, to be the baby of her first wave of grandchildren. Normally when she speaks of Rocco, it’s in tones that imply he’s still a stripling. He turns 42 in January.

Rocco discovered that his wife had fallen head over heels in love with the next door neighbor and had, well, acted out on her feelings. It’s one thing to have an affair. Lots of marriages survive the trauma of one or the other partner sleeping with a third party. But when that third party lives a mere 40 feet away and can be seen by both the wandering and the aggrieved parties mowing the lawn in a sleeveless T-shirt exposing his healthy tan and rippling biceps, it’s difficult to relegate the indiscretion to mere memory.

Perhaps Ma envisioned her golden years as free from such soap operas but, sadly, life goes on as usual no matter how old she becomes. It would have been nice had Rocco’s soon-to-be ex-wife thought What would Grandma say? as she was dolling herself up for that first tryst. But very few people think in those terms and if they did, they probably wouldn’t be dolling themselves up for a tryst in the first place.

Among Ma’s children and grandchildren, of whom there are some 16 card-carrying members, there have been no fewer than 11 dissolutions of marriage. Suffice it to say Ma’s progeny finds the whole “until death do you part” clause problematic.

It’s ironic. Ma spent her whole life married to the same man. She and Dad got married when she was 16 and he was 19. They had to run away to Indiana to get hitched because at that time the state allowed non-resident minors to wed if they were accompanied by an adult relative. So Ma leaned on my Uncle Louie and Aunt Vera to vouch for them.

In the car as the two couples left the seedy quicky marriage chapel, Aunt Vera turned around and said, “You know, you’re really not husband and wife yet because you haven’t been married in the Church,” an odd consideration to introduce at that late hour. Ma, being young and scared, took Aunt Vera’s words to heart and insisted that she and her new not-quite husband sleep apart that night. Ma swears this part of the tale is true and admits it was a difficult night to endure. Dad’s not around anymore for me to canvas on his view of the matter. In any case, Ma never has revealed what happened on the second or third nights although the aforementioned progeny ought to be clue enough.

As all but one of her siblings’ marriages ended in divorce and even her own parents’ arranged marriage ended, Ma proudly proclaimed that she was in it to the bitter end. It was her badge of accomplishment that she buried her only husband. Only after Dad had passed away did she begin to claim that not only the end was bitter but the beginning and middle as well. Now when she finds it necessary to muse aloud on the deprivations and horrors she endured through 57 years of wedded anti-bliss, I caution her that it might be wiser to occasionally let the old man rest in peace.

Ma looks hurt when I put the brakes on these conversations. I can see her point — it’s like telling Meryl Streep to shut up about all those Oscars.

Nevertheless, I’m certain Ma fantasizes waiting outside the gates of heaven as the doorman scans her record and his eyes light up when he sees that she was married to the same man for 57 years, right up until the very bitter end. Whaddya waiting for? he’ll say. Step right in. You’ve earned it!

I’m not kidding. Ma has become more religious as she nears the end zone. Sort of a hedging of her bets, I suppose. In fact, the last time she visited me down in Louisville, Kentucky, she asked me if I still believe in god. I hadn’t the heart to tell her I never believed in god but I did admit that as of that juncture I wasn’t among the saved. She closed her eyes, threw her head back in pain and muttered, “Oh no.”

Life didn’t exactly turn out the way Ma would have wanted. What with all those divorces and the non-believers running around, it must seem as though she’s living in the town of Sodom. If I were to say one thing to her in consolation, though, it’d be that very few of us accomplish the one great personal goal we all dream of. She did.