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Recently in Salon Mothers Who Think

Perfect for this world
Scarlett O'Hara taught my mother to make a velvet dress out of the living room curtains. And my mother, before she died, taught me that I must win at all costs.
By Avital Gad Cykman
[05/11/00]

Supplicant
My mother gave me up before either of us knew the value of a mother. After her death, I no longer confuse longing with love.
By Kathryn Harrison
[05/11/00]

ILOVEYOUTOO!
Let's take a moment to appreciate the brutal sexual politics of the love virus.
By Jonathan Poletti
[05/10/00]

My four favorite photos of my mother
Her true selves are revealed, as real as uncut gems.
By Amy Bloom
[05/10/00]

My mother the nun
It's true she was a bride of Christ -- just don't ask for details of the marriage.
By Theresa Rusho
[05/10/00]

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Anyway, my mother, who was born in the same year -- 1914 -- that President Woodrow Wilson declared Mother's Day a national holiday, would send the notes so that I could be excused from participating in classroom Mother's Day projects -- card making, picture drawing, poem writing and the like. She found Mother's Day maudlin, sappy, dull and dimwitted, she told me, and she didn't want me observing it.

Also Today My mother's 10 rules to live by Take them with a grain of salt, but just one grain or you'll bloat. By Elissa Schappell The series An introduction to this week's series By Jennifer Foote Sweeney Beyond Hearts and Flowers We devote a week to Mother's Day and the messages that don't fit on the cards.

Needless to say, our family didn't go out for a special brunch on the second Sunday in May, nor did we bake a cake. "If nothin' says lovin' like somethin' from the oven," my mother once remarked, "I wouldn't have all these kids."

She was a typical mother, as far as I knew. Sometimes she'd take my siblings and me on picnics -- to the local cemetery, where we'd eat salami sandwiches, then while away the summer afternoons searching for the tombstones with oval photos of dead people on them; the water-damaged ones were best. Other times, she'd pack up my pet tortoise in a shoe box and hike the three miles to my school so that my favorite reptile could join me during the lunch hour. "He's a quiet pet, isn't he?" she said once, looking at the soup-bowl-size creature, "but very good company."

We didn't take vacations, so when tortoises and tombstones were no longer enough, she'd commit herself (or be committed) to the local franchise of the state mental hospital for a month or three or five. It wasn't exactly a spa -- the place favored electroshock treatment over exercycles -- but it did afford a long-term, low-priced break from the rigors of life, and all the Thorazine you could eat. On weekends we'd visit her there.

This sounds drearier in retrospect than it seemed at the time. A child's reference points -- to the degree they exist at all -- are different from an adult's. You're 8, you're 9 -- what's normal? Who knows? Once the grown-ups calmed down (and her sedation kicked in), the weekend outings to the mental hospital, where there were many strangely attired, slow-moving adults behaving oddly and wearing Mona Lisa smiles, were not boring but novel, and therefore good. On visiting days, my mother's spirits were high, sometimes very high, other times very, very high. And the place had big lawns, big trees and plenty of vending machines.

Next page | She asked a psychiatrist she knew for a pen