Sissy’s Story (My Mom)

     I've learned that we all have quirks, which lead to interesting stories and parents are no exception.  My Mom, Sissy as everyone knew her had many quirks as I'm sure anyone living to the age of 90 may have.

     Mom would frequently miss-pronounce words or names but she was consistently wrong in that she would miss-pronounce it wrong the same way every time.  We initially tried to correct her but eventually we just laughed and used her pronunciation when we spoke to her.  Ruby Tuesdays in Mom's world was Judy Tuesdays, Chick-fil-a became Chick-a-lick, which we still use today, Styrofoam became Styfoam.

     She liked to bake and she made great pies, apple & lemon merengue were my favorites.  We would often tell her to make my slice small but she would always cut a the pie in no more than 5 pieces because you needed to eat your quota.  What quota?  Well, we never knew because she would always say, "You didn't eat your quota", so apparently no one ever ate his or her quota.

     Although Mom was a good baker the rest of her cooking skills were less impressive.  Almost everything was fried so not the healthiest option but that was what most families ate.  Some fried foods can be overlooked and dried out which was true of some of my Mom's dishes but I remember a couple of breakfast items that I looked forward to eating.  One was pan-fried cornmeal mush in butter and then drizzled with syrup and the other was fried puff wheat, which was also in butter but sprinkled with sugar.  We recently tried the fried mush and were pleasantly surprised, it was really tasty and pretty healthy considering it is fried.  We have not tried the fried puff wheat yet but we will.

     Mom's recipes were in her head, nothing was written down so if you would ask for a recipe she would say, “I don’t know the exact amount just put some in until it’s right”. Helpful, not!  Funny, yes!

     She loved Perry Como, dogs & angel stories, she liked to dance and shop.  She hated baseball thought it was boring but loved bowling.  She didn’t like that we put the alley bumpers up when we had an 80^th bowling birthday party for her.  She loved touching soft things in stores but she never put them away because she said gives them a job to put them back.

     When her grandkids would go over to see her she would always seemed surprised when she answered the door saying “ooooo’ every time even though she knew you were coming over.  She was hard of hearing so she would miss out on some conversation so when the kids would be talking to her and she didn’t hear she would ask them to repeat what they said but they would frequently say “Never mind”.  She would say I don’t like “Never mind”.  She didn’t want to miss out on the story.

     Our daughter Maureen went to visit her and rang the doorbell but she never answered so she left. Mom heard her but thought it was the answering machine so the next day she told Rose (my sister) that Maureen left a message on the telephone recorder, telling Rose “Maureen’s in there, how do I get her out.” 

     Sissy loved playing board games (Risk) and cards but she had her own set of rules that you needed to learn are you would be subjected to her funny sarcastic humor, which we all enjoyed and learned to give it right back.

     Her favorite TV shows were Days of our lives and Wheel of Fortune.  Mom loved strong coffee, cream but no sugar and she would drink it all day long, percolating from morning to night, which made it stronger and stronger.

     So here's saluting all Mom's with their funny and interesting quirks, it wouldn't have been the same without you.