Mothers Day is Sunday, so if you haven’t purchased your cards or flowers yet you better get on the ball. Your mom may not live up to your expectations of June Cleaver or Carol Brady, but most of them do the best they can and let’s face it, you probably weren’t exactly Pollyanna. So this week’s Friday Five honors MOTHERS.
- What’s the most important lesson you learned from your mom?
- What’s one thing you WISH your mom would’ve told you?
- Who is your favorite mother and daughter from fiction?
- What woman who is not your mother has had the biggest influence in your life?
- In what ways have you turned into your mother?
Leave your answers in the comments. My responses after the jump.
I was a victim this week.
I was trying to get my car washed. Sometimes I just go through the Exxon car wash - it’s convenient to my house and easy to use because I can just swipe my gas card to pay for it. But my car was pretty dirty. I probably should have taken it to one of those detailing shops because it was really dirty. So I thought I would take it to that really nice drive-through car wash across the street from the Exxon. At the BP station.
I pulled up to the entrance but the card reader wouldn’t read my BP card. I tried a couple times, then pulled around to the front of the gas station (sighing heavily. Soooo inconvenienced). Inside, I told the cashier that I was trying to get a car wash and it wouldn’t read my card (*flashes BP card around as visual aid*). She says, “We don’t have anything to do with the car wash.” I said, “So you can’t charge my gas card and give me a code?” I mean, that’s how they do it across the street at the Exxon. She says again, “We don’t have anything to do with the car wash.” Fine, I huff. I’ll just go across the street.
Just got word that one of Memphis’s nicest guys, Thomas Boggs, died this morning. At 63, Thomas had done more living than most of us ever will, from his early rocker days with the Box Tops to his restaurant dynasty, which now includes the seven Huey’s locations, as well as partnerships in Folk’s Folly, Tsunami and the Half Shell. But the thing I’ll remember best about Thomas is how friendly and welcoming he was to a newbie Memphian back in the early 1990s, always willing to tell me who was connected to whom, how to reach them, and later, ready with a wave and a smile for my son whenever he saw us. I also admire him for sharing the wealth with his daughters, pictured here with him at Huey’s in a 2006 photo — (from left) Ashley Williams, Samantha Dean, and Lauren McHugh.
Godspeed, Thomas. We’ll miss you like hell.
I typically spend the first four or five months of a new year renting and watching Academy Award-nominated films. Maybe it’s where we live or maybe I’m just not quick enough on the draw, but I never manage to see many of them prior to the awards ceremony. This weekend I watched The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, based on the French memoir Le Scaphandre et le Papillon.
I pretty much decided that I needed to see this movie when Julian Schnabel beat out the Coen brothers, Ridley Scott and Tim Burton for the Best Director Golden Globe. When I started watching it, I thought first that it was really weird. But as the story unfolded and I realized what was going on, it started to seem pretty freaking amazing. Then it made my eyes hurt and I had to go take out my contacts. Read the rest of this entry »
By the time I arrived, the alumni field hockey game had already started. It was cold and misty, but the women on the field hardly noticed. I watched, awed by the incredible fitness, skill and determination of both the alums in their purple T-shirts and the current team in uniform.
I felt shy, as I always do when I’m watching the current incarnation of my former collegiate team. It’s difficult to believe that the women on the field — most on scholarship, all top-ranked on their high school teams — have anything in common with the dumpy uniforms, ad hoc practice facilities and determined but random collection of players that make up my field hockey memories. It was even harder to imagine that any part of my life now — as a slightly out-of-shape wife, mother and journalist — would be even remotely interesting to them.
Turns out I was wrong. (Read the rest of my Sunday column HERE.)
