My mom was a study in contrasts, a very sharp woman who quoted Shakespeare and Poe well into her 90s, yet whose declarations often smacked more of Yogi Berra. “You don’t need to pay him,” she once advised me when her neighbor changed my tire. “Just give him some money.”
Any conversation with my mom could yield a bonanza of “Berra-isms.” Years ago, suspecting she’d developed a blood clot in her leg, I rushed her to the ER, where the doctor confirmed my diagnosis and warned my mother away from the knee-high stockings she was sporting. “Absolutely the worst thing you can wear for circulation,” he scolded.
“Oh, I don’t actually wear them,” she explained. “I just put them on.”
When she was discharged a few hours later, she instructed me to pull the car up to the ER door and “beep the horn” for her. When I protested, insisting that blowing a car horn in a hospital zone was frowned upon, she replied, “No, of course, don’t beep; just toot.”
Along with unintentional humor, there was often a loopy kind of logic as well as a pearl of wisdom hiding within the shell of my mom’s convoluted phrasing. I now know her explanation of menopause to be all too true. “It’s like you become dumb for no apparent reason,” she told my sisters and me.
But her marriage advice to my sisters and me was Mom at her most hilariously inscrutable best. “Sometimes,” she counseled us, “you just have to get the bucket.”
“What bucket?” we asked, utterly confused, but sensing a “Berra-ism” in the making.
“Well, say he’s fixing something and he loses his patience, so he barks at you to bring him something he needs, like the bucket,” she began. (For the record, that was a pretty accurate description of my dad’s behavior when he got impatient with a project.)
“And you don’t feel like being ordered around and getting the bucket,” she continued. “Go in the bathroom and repeat just as mad as you want, ‘I’m not getting him that GD bucket’ until you feel better. And then go get him the bucket.”
When our howling over her head-scratching choice of a metaphor subsided, we all balked at what hit our liberated ears as advice to be submissive and stifle our feelings, so we dismissed it as another kooky mom anecdote.
Now as a twice-married adult, I realize my mom was really saying that in marriage you have to give, bend and sometimes get the GD bucket, even when you don’t particularly want to. Sometimes practicing patience and biting your tongue—or venting your frustration in the bathroom if necessary!—in the short run is the wisest choice in the long run.
It was the choice I myself made the other morning when I was awakened by my husband bellowing that our kitchen sink had sprung a sizable leak.
“Quick, get me the bucket!” he yelled urgently.
I leapt out of bed and hustled to the kitchen, bucket in hand. And, I didn’t even stop in the bathroom on the way.
As my husband and I mopped up the mess, I couldn’t help thinking my mom was looking down from heaven, having a good chuckle at our expense. Pearls of wisdom? More like wisdom more precious than pearls. Thanks, Mom.
I love it..I could hear my mom’s “Berra-ism’s” while reading this story! I wasn’t supposed to get married unless I had a dishwasher…LOL
Little did you know YOU were the dishwasher! 😉 I wonder what our kids will write about our sage advice someday!
I love this! It’s so wonderful when those words come flowing back into our minds and hearts and then we finally understand! Classic.
Isn’t it funny how our parents continue to grow in wisdom even after they have passed on! Thanks so much for your kind words, Bonnie!
Lee, your mom was hilarious and wise! (I say that writing from the late Yogi Berra’s longtime hometown: Montclair, NJ.)
She was both and more than anything she was a good sport about three daughters who teased her incessantly–and it’s all come home to roost now with our own kids doing the same to us! Thanks so much for reading, Dave.
Your Mom sounds precious. I got a kick out of this — sweet, wise, funny and to the point. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you so much for your kind comments, Donna! My mom was quite a character and force to be reckoned with. 🙂
Love your mother’s pearls of wisdom, Lee. Her innocent comments that were so contradictory cracked me up. “I don’t actually wear them. I put them on.” Haha! And you were wise not to stop in the bathroom when your kitchen sink was leaking. There are times to vent and then there are times when you have to spring into action. You chose wisely, my friend. Your mom would approve.
She was such a good sport about how much we teased her! We knew what she meant, but the way she said it was hilarious! Thanks, Molly! See you in Cindy, my friend!
I really laughed at this one. I had a mom like that too. My mom also messed up her words often. Once after an appointment with the eye doctor, she said” I was so afraid it was guacamole but it was only Cadillacs.” Really Mom? Chip dip or luxury cars? At the eye doctor’s? Again, loved this!
Guacamole and Cadillacs, that’s hysterical!! Imagine if our moms got together! Thanks so much for stopping by, Denise!
I think she is absolutely spot on speaking from experience I’ve only been married 2 years but yep this resonates!
Yes, sometimes, we just have to bite our tongues and get each other the bucket! My husband indulges me this way on regular basis!
Many days lately I don’t feel like getting the GD bucket lol! But yes, you’ve gotta bend! Great wisdom from your Mom!
Me neither! My mom was so funny–she would say the letters “G-D” in a low voice and she spelled the word “darn.” She say, “I’m so d-a-r-n mad.” We’d howl and tell her she was allowed to actually say the word! 🙂