Three Mothers on Mother’s Day

My mother, Loretta Flick

Just read a column in the Wall Street Journal by a fellow who told of the first time he brought home a centerfold of a partially nude young woman. This happened in the early 1980s, when his hormones were in their teens. His mother was clever, he said, in that she asked him if it was right to steal. He replied, “No.”

“Even when it’s easy and out in the open?” she continued. “No,” he confirmed. “Then don’t steal this woman’s dignity,” and she took away the centerfold. Thank you, Mom, the fellow wrote, now from an adult perspective.

My Mother

His story reminded me that at the same stage of life, I brought home a Playboy calendar and hung it in my bedroom. Of course my mother saw it, but she held back and thought. The room was “mine.” But the house was hers and Dad’s, and I was still a boy, or young man if you want to be generous. How do you fight your son on something important without fighting him?

She settled on a genuinely creative solution. She rounded up her magazines—maybe Saturday Evening Post, Life, among others, and took them to the kitchen table. She then took my calendar to the table. For each month in the calendar, she found pictures of fully clothed women in her magazines. She cut out the dresses, slacks, sweaters, etc, and pasted them onto the mostly nude women in the calendar. For the spring, Mom had sun dresses, light sweaters, and bonnets. For the summer, maybe shorts, blouses, and sun glasses. In the winter, coats and boots. Then she hung the calendar back in my room.

I don’t remember how I felt upon finding her work, but I recognized the creativity. Mom said I handled it pretty well. I couldn’t remove the clothing without pulling off the surface of the nude, ruining it for viewing. I left the calendar on the wall and turned up the page each month, thereby honoring for a year the genius of a woman I was lucky to know and follow.

My Wife as Mother

And that story reminds me of one about by wife, Barbara, and her creative management of an incident with our son, Andy, when he was about five. He was irritated with Barbara, but none of us remembers why. He told Barbara, “I want another mother.”

Barbara thought about it, and suggested they put an ad in the paper for “another mother.” Andy said that was a good idea, so they sat at the table with a pad and pencil to write the ad. Barbara asked Andy what characteristics he would like in “another mother.” They thought for a minute, then Barbara said, “I know, you want a mother who does not put nuts in chocolate chip cookies.”

“Yes,” he said, “that’s good.”

“What else?” asked Barbara.

Andy sat silently for a few moments, thoughtful, maybe a little sad. Then he said, “I’ll give you one more chance,” and he got up and went to his room.

Happy Mother’s Day

Barbara and Andy Flick, 1979