My Dog is Chelsea

My mother complained at the dinner table during the Family Vacation that my blog has an entire section dedicated to making fun of her. While this is somewhat true (there is indeed a category called “My mother”), my intention is not at all to make fun of her. Except sometimes.

She is a wonderful woman—smart, strong, resilient. She’s dealt with more incredible strokes of bad luck in one lifetime than any human being should ever have to endure—and she’s done so with grace, determination and infallible bravery. The older I get, the more and more I appreciate who she is (side note: perhaps not surprisingly, this corresponds directly to the rate at which I become more and more like her).

So, I am saying this for all of the blogosphere to know: I love my mother dearly, even when she nags me about dating a man with tattoos on his arms or about giving her grandkids (not with Tattoo Man, though, unless he gets the tattoos removed, do you think he’d ever consider that, Laura?) or about buying a house or whatever else adult thing I should be doing but am not.

That said:

We watched the Oscars together as a family. Since most of us save for my fabulous Uncle Joe had not seen any of the nominated movies, commentary revolved around outfits, Joaquin Phoenix (“But why did he go on Letterman like that?” my mother demanded), quality of acceptance speeches (“Thank your f-ing wife, you bastard!” my uncle yelled), and how awkward it must’ve been for Jennifer Aniston to do her schtick with Brangelina sitting so close to the stage.

Then, of course, there was the whole “is that movie worth seeing?” topic, and my mother’s report was that she had read the Reader and didn’t like it, but that she’d heard the movie version has more sex in it so it might be better, and that Slumdog Millionaire was great and definitely worth seeing.

She then proceeded to give us a plot synopsis of Slumdog. And by plot synopsis, I mean she revealed the entire movie. It went somewhat like this:

“It’s about a kid from the slums who goes on a game show to win money so he can win over a rich girl. So he—”

“Don’t tell us what happens,” I said.

“I won’t. So he [insert entire middle of the movie here] and then at the end he [insert ending here].”

“Mother! You just told us what happens!”

“It’s still worth seeing!”

So sometimes I do use this space to make fun of her. But I love her nonetheless.