My Hero Wore Fur

Not all super heroes wear a cape. Mine wore a mink coat.

First grade Christmas party.  My mother, then 22 years old, brought snow white cupcakes with red sprinkles to a room full of rowdy ready-for-Santa first graders on the last day before Christmas break in 1964.  She looked like she stepped off the pages of Teen Magazine dressed in pink stirrup pants, fluffy sweater, gold sparkly shoes and a mink coat.

Actually, she wore a mouton coat, but in the eyes of these first graders, it was a mink coat.  Like the one Marilyn Monroe wore when she surprised the world and up and married old Joltin’ Joe.

My friends asked me if she was a movie star.  Simple answer:  How could she be a movie star when she’s my mama?

She was 16 years old when I was born.  Just 10 months and 13 days after she married my daddy.  Standing in front of a justice of the peace in a gray suit borrowed from her sister, my mother was a child bride.  I have pictures of me as a baby with my teenage mother’s favorite doll, Annie Oakley.  My daddy gave her that doll… and me.  They went on to have 4 more children and Annie Oakley was forgotten somewhere along the way.

Standing just north of 5 ft. tall, mama was not like all the other mothers.  She was pretty with her dark curly hair, perfect complexion and twinkling eyes. She painted her lips in Avon Red Velvet and always smelled like Evening in Paris perfume.  On Saturdays, we watched American Bandstand and sang and danced around the living room with Dick Clark and the American Bandstand Dancers.  When it came time for my daddy to get home from work, she washed our faces and combed our hair and stood at the window waiting for him to drive up.   He came home to her every single day for 55 years.

Super heroes do cry sometimes.   My mama has lost 3 of her 5 children and 7 of her 11 siblings.  Her beloved husband passed away suddenly six years ago.  She doesn’t laugh as much and her brown eyes are a little less bright.

American Bandstand has been replaced with The Young and the Restless as must-see-TV and her glamorous mouton coat is in storage at my house.  The last bottle of Evening in Paris that my daddy gave her sits on my dresser, empty now.  I still occasionally take the top off just to get a whiff of my childhood.

My mama is no less a hero today than she was that day she made her 6 year old daughter the envy of all the other first graders.  She is still beautiful with dark curly hair, a perfect complexion and, yes, sometimes Red Velvet lips.

 

 

Lessons on Black Leather

He was clad in typical motorcycle garb – black leather vest, leather chaps, motorcycle boots, dew rag hanging out of his helmet, hugging a big black Harley.  A rugged, bear of a man.

Stopping next to him at the red light gave me an opportunity to critique him like a New York Times book reviewer.  My southern mama’s mind went to work immediately.  That is nothing but trouble. 

Then I saw him.  Riding shotgun was a miniature replica of Mr. Motorcycle Dude.  Little black leather vest, a red, white and blue bandana tired around his neck.  I could see shiny brown eyes peeping from underneath wind-blown silver and brown hair. A tiny pink tongue darted in and out to the rhythm of the distinct rattle of the V-twin engine.  Seeming to grin from ear to ear, the little Yorkshire terrier was sitting pretty in a rigged up safety seat built especially for him.   Four or five pounds of best friend. 

Puppy dogs and babies soften even the hardest shell of a person.

Why do we judge people on how they look?  How they dress?  Even what they drive?

On second glance, maybe he is a doctor who cares for terminally ill patients every day except Friday’s when he rides his Harley through the back streets of DeSoto County to unwind.

Maybe he is a fireman who worked most of the night putting his own life in danger to save someone else’s family and is headed out of the city for a break.

Maybe he is a teacher who gets through to the ignored, abused, forgotten children of our world because they can relate to him.

Maybe he is the butcher, the baker or candle stick maker.  He is someone’s son, dad, husband, friend.   

Whatever he does or whatever he drives or however he is dressed does not determine who he is.  Except when he is stopped at a red light next to a somewhat set-in-her-ways, self-proclaimed southern belle with a really hard shell who is learning new lessons on humanity.  (Matthews 7:1)

Every.  Single.  Day.    

This I know to be true:    Anyone who takes his Yorkie for a ride on his Fat Boy on a beautiful, sunny Friday afternoon is a hero in my book.