Remember what I always taught you

My mother used to say, Remember what I always taught you: lie, cheat and steal. She said it to excuse herself when she told a white lie to get out of doing something, like, I’m sick, I can’t go to the Bulgarian women’s choir festival even though she was not sick and was staying home because she secretly admitted that she hated the Bulgarian Women’s Choir. It was the early 1970’s in Berkeley, California and it was not cool to hate the Bulgarian Women’s Choir, or to hate weaving wall hangings, or to hate grinding your own flour. She said, Remember what I always taught you: lie, cheat and steal, while pulling out of the Safeway parking lot after slightly scraping someone’s car and not leaving a note. She said it when she pulled a sweatshirt out of the lost and found at school and wore it jogging the next day. She said it with a wink but wore it like a queen’s crown. I was her enamored subject.

Another one of her sayings was, Life is tough and then you die. Sometimes she said as if she was saying, Oh poor you, when I was whining about something. Other times she said it with bitterness and resentment, like, You give and give and give and then it’s all over, and for what? Sometimes, she said it matter-of-factly, just after dinner of one-pan roasted chicken, carrots, and potatoes in front of the T.V. watching 60 Minutes. The clock would tick on the T.V. screen, and she would drop it with resolve and finality, Life is tough and then you die. Period.

Another refrain of hers was, You gotta laugh to keep from crying. She laughed a lot.

After hearing about someone doing something stupid, she would say, Rots of ruck! I would say, Joan is getting married again! She would counter with, Rots of ruck! I recently discovered this phrase is rooted in a racist slur. All this time I thought it was a Daffy Duck thing, or Porky Pig. But my friend told me it was making fun of Chinese people. I was horrified. Did my mother know this? She must have. But I must have too, and I did not.

Every year, around election time, my mother and her friends would start saying, Have you gotten your Muestra de Ballota? They would get together and talk politics repeating Muestra de Ballota as many times as they could. My mom died during a very important election. After her passing I called my best friend to let her know the news. My friend was silent for a long time and then she asked softly, Did she vote? I could hear my mother laugh out loud from the other side. Now, that’s the kind of friend you want to have, Honey! A friend who knows what’s important, the Muestra de Ballota!

When I didn’t know what choice to make, she would say, If you don’t know, wait. I understood this as her way of saying, There is another option between doing and not doing, allow things to unfold. Then again, she would also say, Nothing is written in blood, which I understood as, Go ahead, try it! You can always change your mind. When my mother and I would walk into a room, she would say, We’re here and we’re queer! When my friends and I showed off our prom dresses she would tell us, If you got it, flaunt it! When she talked trash behind someone’s back, she would end with, What they don’t know won’t hurt them. When I was acting like a fool she would say, You’re going from pillar to post. When I was acting particularly foolish, she would say, You don’t know your ass from a hole in the wall. But when I was really down in the dumps, despairing and lost, she would say, One foot in front of the other, just one foot in front of the other. When I hated everything and everyone she’d say, Start with kindness. And when it seemed like the world was ending, she said, There are good people in the world.

My mother was one of those good people. Good, despite or because of, telling me to lie, cheat, and steal. I have remembered everything she taught me.