Once again, with its normal regularity, Mother’s Day has come around.

For some weird reason, the memory that sprang to mind this morning was an occasion in (if I remember correctly) the spring of 1970.    I returned from Denver on March 11, 1969, and she came back roughly a year or so later, so I’m guessing spring would be about right.  I don’t remember if she’d gotten her own apartment yet and was visiting Grandma and Grandpa’s house, or if she was staying there until she got her own place.   Whatever…

I’d gone over to see her, so it must have been a weekend.  During my visit she’d already had three or four tall vodka-and-waters, so it was probably close to noon or shortly thereafter.

Oddly she decided she was hungry, found herself a hamburger patty, and was gong to fry it in the kitchen.  But   once it hit the pan, she was “tired” and wanted to sit outside again (where she could smoke and drink) and told me to watch the hamburger and bring it to her when it was done.  Mind you, I’d never really cooked anything before except hard boiled eggs, had not received any instruction about how done she wanted it or anything.  So finally it looked cooked enough to me.  I slapped it on a plate, grabbed a fork and took it out to her.

She was LIVID.  “You don’t even know how to cook a hamburger patty!!”   (umm… no, because no one had shown me how, bitch.)   She took it back into the kitchen, cursing all the while, and did it the way she wanted.

A little later, after telling me to refresh her drink (AGAIN), I figured she was too far gone to notice, so I put in maybe a capful of vodka and filled the rest with water.   She noticed.   Dammit.

And then, sitting there on the front porch of the home where she’d grown up, and her stepfather sitting inside, she pulled up her hem and lowered the top of her dress and asked, “So!  Are you a leg man or a tit man?”

What the fuck?   I just said, “I don’t know,” and decided it was time for me to go home and get away from there and away from her.