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My mom is here.

My mom is a mom. She takes me to the park. I walk around, meet new people. The sky is always blue. I forget where I am. She says “Stevie.” And I find her again. I hold her hand. We walk to the car. She takes me to the beach. We eat tuna fish sandwiches and chips. We drink Pepsi. I walk around, count the lifeguard stations, study seashells. Then I wander along the beach, forget where I am, come back later. She is okay with this.

Sometimes, my mom and I don’t do anything. We just sit around a lot, watch TV. We watch Happy Days and Mork & Mindy. We watch Night Gallery and Room 222. Our favorite TV show, though, is Little House on the Prairie. My mom always cries at the end of each episode. I always turn around to watch her cry right before the denouement. My mom says “Don’t.” Laughs, then cries. My mom falls asleep at 9:30 every night. My mom looks like Sally Field.

My mom is there a lot for me. She helps me with my homework. She writes my stories for me for the school newspaper. When we go on field trips everybody wants to be in her group, especially the other girls. During back-to-school night, she is always the youngest mom. Every Thanksgiving, everyone in the family is mad because Aunt Debbie is gay, my mom says “It doesn’t matter if two people are gay as long as they love each other.” My mom still writes my stories for me.

My mom likes Christmas a lot. Seriously. It’s her favorite holiday. Eleven months out of the year she decorates the house the colors of Christmas. In March, my mom removes all the red, green tinsel. So, the house is all silver. My mom doesn’t drink alcohol that much. Four sips of anything with alcohol in it make her drunk. So, she drinks eggnog. Or milk. My mom likes milk. Even though my mom looks like Sally Field, she is afraid to fly in airplanes. She ran into Doc Severinsen on an airplane once.

After my mom and dad divorce, my mom gets a job. My mom works as a teacher helping retarded children in a local elementary school. She works nights, sometimes, at the Anaheim Convention Center to make extra money. My mom goes to school, becomes a dentist’s assistant. We have a small graduation party for her. I don’t see her that much, though, because she works all the time. 

My mom starts to date people who are not my dad. She dates a race car driver. She dates a roofer. She dates a surveyor guy. I wonder why my mom dates guys who are not as smart as her. Anyway, after years of courtship, she marries the surveyor guy. The wedding is nice. It’s in a church. Everybody cries. We go to Lake Tahoe, walk around a lot, each chili, listen to Vangelis. My mom is happy, I think.

In southern California, summertime begins in March, the night of the Oscars. It is a special occasion. My mom and I eat something, usually chicken pot pies, milk, that’s really special. Then we watch the red carpet ceremony, stay up all night, eat candy bars, peanut butter cups and milk. When Sally Field wins an Oscar, she makes a speech, says something dramatic, heart-felt and emotional. My mom cries. I cry, then think “I want to win an Oscar someday.” It’s funny, but Oscar night is the only night of the year my mom doesn’t go to sleep at 9:30.

If I win an Oscar someday, I will say “I like my mom. I really, really like her.”