Pre-Mother's Day Thoughts

This has been one heckuva week - not only with Mom finally getting a new (actually, slightly used) liver via transplant, but pal Chuck at Comic Related lost his father due to illness...and it has me in one of my contemplative moods, especially on the day before Mother's Day.

(And yes, I'm planning to visit her tomorrow, why do you ask?)

Much of it is that, having lost one parent....I'm not particularly keen on losing the other one, but more importantly, it was my Mom who had the greatest impact on my tastes in movies, music...and, ironically, comics.

I only learned of this recently - January, as a matter of fact...but my mom had a small collection of comics as a child. (My grandmother, at one point, made her get rid of them). I had always wondered why, growing up, Mom made a point of reading my comics. Oh, sure, there was the parental need-to-know-what-my-child's-reading (which even extended, not ironically, to Playboy in my early adult years....or is that too much information?). But there was also something about the fact that Mom more readily accepted comics while my dad, who also encouraged me to read more as a child, did not appreciate them as much as Mom did. (For the record, my father considered comics a waste of time and money. Insert joke here.)

But more importantly, it was my musical tastes that my mother had influenced, more than any other.

It was her collection of Beatles' records (at least, up to and including Sgt. Pepper) that led me to consistent relistening of their albums, including Revolver. (Of course, my grandmother also had her throw out most of her Beatle memorabilia). But much of my mother's collection consisted of British Invasion influences (for example, a pre-Lola Kinks' Greatest Hits and their American counterparts (the infamous "toilet" cover of the Mamas & the Papas' If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears.

(Of course, in all honesty....she also tried to discourage me from seeing Benny Hill and Monty Python when I was a child, not finding it appropriate. I found ways around that...so sorry, Mom).

So after all this, here's an ironic twist - it's about 1990-ish, and Mom comes home, having just bought a personal computer for her accounting business (and my homework). She had gone out and bought a Prodigy online kit, with software on a 5-1/4 inch disc and a 1200 baud per minute modem. She told me that with this, we could talk with other people online, and my response?

"Ah, nobody's gonna talk online. They want to meet, they could do it in person."

Thanks, Mom.