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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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"Mother's Day is sentimental hogwash, don't you agree?"

"Oh, I do," the shrink answered. "I really do." He was a good soul, and savvy.

"I'm glad to hear you say that," she said while she quickly scribbled the note. "I think we're the only two sane ones in here." The doctor chortled.

"Though I'm not so sure about you," she yelled after him as he walked off.

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.

That got a big laugh all around. Even at 9 years old I knew that saying a head doctor might be out of his head was hilarious. It was a laugh a minute at the nut hut -- much more fun than Mrs. Eagerblade's class.

The next day I walked into fourth grade and handed over the note. The teacher rolled her eyes. When I explained the situation to several classmates, they all said that my mom must be crazy, except for my friend Geoff, who was Goth a quarter century before Goth was cool.

The cumulative effect of those notes over my entire grammar school career was not only to relieve me of complicity in the great annual groundswell of sentimental hogwash that my mother found too saccharine to condone but to illuminate the utility of a good bullshit detector, a bad attitude and a degree of guerrilla jocularity when confronted with institutionalized nonsense.

As for my mother, her life continued for decades longer. She would go for years without a stay in the loony bin. There'd be long stretches of good times, travel, church activities, voracious reading. Then, as she once described it to me, the snake would begin eating at her heart (a paraphrased line, I believe, from her favorite author, Thomas Wolfe).

The last time I visited her on a psychiatric ward was in the early 1980s, a couple of years before she died. When I arrived, she was sitting in a hospital room, looking out the window toward the eastern hills of the San Francisco Bay Area, the hills where she lived.

"Oh, here's my brother," she said to a nurse who was just leaving.

"No," I said, "I'm your son."

"That's right," she said.

"Is this a Christ healing place?" she asked.

"It's a hospital," I answered.

"Really? It doesn't seem like one. There's all this funny equipment and the people and all. First I was down there, but then they moved me and now I'm not sure where we are."

"This is Eden Hospital," I said. "You can almost see your house from here." I pointed toward the hills.

"Eden ..." she repeated.

A short time later a male attendant walked in, pushing a wheelchair. "Hi," he said to her. "It's time to go downstairs for your spinal tap."

"That sounds fun," she said.

I walked beside her as she was wheeled down the hall to the elevator. "So where do you come from?" the attendant asked her.

"I come from Alabamy with a banjo on my knee," she replied.

I was returning home to Los Angeles that afternoon and wouldn't see her again for a long time. As we waited for the elevator she reached over to me. "You know," she whispered, holding my hand, "they say I'm losing my mind, but I don't miss it."
salon.com | May 12, 2000

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