March 20: Mrs. Morrow, Hot-Shot, Mother

Old Mrs. Morrow didn't say anything, but boy, you should've seen her.  I had her glued to her seat.  You take somebody's mother, all they want to hear about is what a hot-shot their son is.

Holden meets Mrs. Morrow on a train to New York City.  She's the mother of one of his classmates at Pencey, a "sonuvabitch" in Holden's estimation.  Yet, Holden likes Mrs. Morrow and tells her a pack of lies about her son, making Ernie out to be a "hot-shot" at school.  Popular,  Humble.  Shy.  Modest.  By the time the train reaches New York, Mrs. Morrow is inviting Holden to visit her son during summer vacation.

Mothers always want to hear the best about their sons and daughters.  Holden tells Mrs. Morrow exactly what she wants to hear.  Her child is a future President of the United States or Nobel Peace Prize winner.  I've had people tell me what a sweet, quiet girl my daughter is.  I usually look at them like they're describing a stranger.  Quiet?  My daughter?

My mother just became an octogenarian a little while ago.  She's always been a strong force in my life.  More than once, she marched up to the high school office when she thought they weren't giving me challenging classes.  When I was a freshman, she had a conversation with the principal on the first day of classes.  The next day, I found myself transferred out of study hall into geometry.  When she dropped me off at school that morning, she looked at me and said, "Don't disappointment me."  I got all A's the entire year.

I appreciate the fact that my mother pushed me as much as she did.  She was a tiger mother before the term "tiger mother" entered the popular lexicon.  She drove me to college scholarship interviews (I eventually received a full-ride from my school of choice).  She was the one who forced me to double-major--English and Computer Science.  She encouraged me to go to graduate school (where I received another full-ride).  After I earned my Master's degree, she suggested a PhD program might be a good idea (although I'd already started applying).  My mother has pushed, nudged, and prodded me through my whole life.  At the release party for my first book of poems, she was in the front row at the reading, smiling and nodding at her hot-shot son.

My mother's mind isn't what it used to be.  When I'm around her, she repeats herself a lot, asks the same questions over and over.  She suffers from macular degeneration.  A voracious reader her whole life, she's reduced to large-print James Patterson and Nicholas Sparks novels.  Last Sunday afternoon, I had dinner at her house.  We talked about my college teaching, and, in a moment of tiger mother clarity, she said, "When are they going to make you a full-time professor?"

I laughed and said, "When I hire a hit man to take out one of the poets in the department."

I worry about my mother now, grieve for the hurricane of woman she used to be.  She doesn't leave the house much anymore and uses a walker to get from her chair to the kitchen to the bathroom.  She could no longer strike fear into the hearts of school principals and counselors.  Yet, I still sense her over my shoulder when I teach or write or give a reading.

She's always there, smiling, whispering in Saint Marty's ear, "Don't disappointment me."

She is mother, hear her roar.

September 12: A Piece of My Mind, Feast Upon, Tiger Mother

"The Founder of the Feast indeed!" cried Mrs. Cratchit, reddening.  "I wish I had him here.  I'd give him a piece of my mind to feast upon, and I hope he'd have a good appetite for it."

God bless Mrs. Cratchit.  Bob is trying to toast Scrooge as the benefactor of the Cratchit family's meager Christmas celebration, and his wife is having no part of it.  She's pissed and ready to unload a little of her anger on Bob.  In defense of Mrs. Cratchit, she has been cooking all day for her family.  She's probably tired and cranky.

Last night, my entire family was tired and cranky.  My wife is still adjusting to her new job.  My daughter had dance classes for four hours in the evening.  I was at my office on campus until almost 8 p.m.  Those are the ingredients for a pretty rotten night.  We were sniping and yelling at each other.  My daughter was crying because her feet hurt and she didn't want to take a shower.  By bedtime, I found myself making this declaration:  "Nobody talk to anybody for the rest of the night!"

Granted, my solution was probably not the most constructive way of dealing with the general cloud of grumpiness pervading the house, but it did the trick.  The shouting and screaming stopped, and all that was heard for the rest of the night were quiet sobs.  I was able to fall asleep.

Of course, I'm not a big believer in the use of verbal abuse.  Sometimes, however, venting your frustrations can be a very freeing act.  Ask Mrs. Cratchit.  There was a book published last year, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, in which the author, Amy Chua, made this statement:  "The solution to substandard performance is always to excoriate, punish, and shame the child."  Chua literally bullied her daughters into success.

I'm sure not too many child rearing experts would agree with Chua's methods.  However, you can't argue with Chua's results:  her older daughter, Sophia, was accepted by Yale and Harvard and is currently attending Harvard.  Results.  I'm not saying I'm going to start calling my daughter a piece of garbage because she can't play Mozart on the piano, but I think there's something to be said for strict parenting.  My mother and father were fairly strict, and I ended up with two advanced college degrees (a Master's in fiction and an MFA in poetry).  Of course, I can't do anything with those degrees except cook hamburgers and chicken strips, but I have a first-rate education.

Maybe tiger women like Amy Chua and Mrs. Cratchit got it right.  I mean, Tigress Cratchit is just trying to give Bob a little backbone to stand up to his boss.  So what if a few tears are shed in the process.  Or self-esteem takes a few blows.  Or therapy is needed.

If Saint Marty's daughter ends up winning a Nobel Prize in medicine or economics, it will all be worth it.

Just call me Tiger Father