mother
It may sound greedy to want more days with a person who lived so long, but the fact that my mother was ninety-two does not diminish—it only magnifies—the enormity of the room whose door has now quietly shut.
Stephen Colbert’s tribute to his mother, Lorna Tuck Colbert, on The Colbert Report, June 19, 2013.
Mother-love, in beasts and birds, can’t always be observed carefully, because of innate animal secrecy, but—to revisit an old Ohio highway for a moment—I once encountered a mother quail leading her young across the road in a single file. She diverted my attention from them by pretending to have a broken wing, and flopped around almost at my feet, in an exhibition of bravura acting something like that of the late Lionel Barrymore as Rasputin. When the small birds had disappeared into the deep grass, she flew calmly away and joined them.
“And So to Medve,” in Old Dogs Remembered, ed. by Bud Johns (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1993), 27–28.
In my parents I had the perfect combination—a resistant father and an encouraging mother. My mother convinced me I could do anything. And my father said, “Prove it.” He didn’t think I could make a living. Resistance produces muscularity. And it was the perfect combination because I could use my mother’s belief to overcome my father’s resistance. My father was a kind of a metaphor for the world, because if you can’t overcome a father’s resistance you’re never going to be able to overcome the world’s resistance. It’s much better than having completely supportive parents or completely resistant parents.
“Chip Kidd Talks with Milton Glaser,” The Believer, September 2003.
Like anyone else, she must have wanted different things at the same time. The human heart is a dark forest.
This Boy’s Life (New York: Grove Press, 1989), 143.
What can you say about the first woman in your life? She was Mum. She sorted me out. She fed me. She was forever slicking my hair and straightening my clothes, in public. Humiliation. But it’s Mum. I didn’t realize until later that she was also my mate. She could make me laugh. There was music all the time, and I do miss her so.
Life (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2010), 40.
My parents raised me never to ask people about their reproductive plans. “You don’t know their situation,” my mom would say. I considered it such an impolite question that for years I didn’t even ask myself. Thirty-five turned into forty faster than McDonald’s food turns into cold non-food.
“Confessions of a Juggler,” The New Yorker, February 14 & 21, 2011, 65.
My overcoat is so dreary that I know maman would never have tolerated the black or gray scarf I always wear with it, and I keep hearing her voice telling me to wear a little color.
For the first time, then, I decide to wear a colored scarf (Scotch plaid).
Entry dated March 6, 1978, in Mourning Diary, translated by Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 2010), 99.
The profound modesty she had—that made her possess, not no belongings at all (no asceticism), but very few belongings—as if she wanted, at her death, that there would be no “getting rid of” what had belonged to her.
Entry dated October 3, 1978, in Mourning Diary, translated by Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 2010), 201.
The lambs had nursed and the ewe was lying quiet. One lamb had settled itself on the mother’s back and was a perfect miniature of the old one—they reminded me of a teapot we have, whose knob is a tiny replica of the pot itself.
“Spring,” in One Man’s Meat (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1944), 233.
The best lesson my mom taught me was how to be scrappy. She was a beauty queen and had her own television show. But for her birthday, she’d buy herself a table saw. She put a roof on our house. My father—great as he is—couldn’t pick up a hammer. It was my mom who was up there pounding the shingles in. But more than that, she taught me how to be realistic and survive in weird situations.
“What I’ve Learned: George Clooney,” by Cal Fussman, Esquire, December 31, 2004.
My mother wasn’t a very patient woman. If I complained about being lonely or bored, she’d tell me to go help someone, anyone. To this day, when I start feeling sorry for myself, I look for a good deed to do.
“The Smartest Advice I Ever Got,” O, The Oprah Magazine, May 18, 2010.