I'm so glad we had this time together.
That thought usually flits through my mind a few days after I unleash upon the denizens of the Interwebs a new installment of this column. I feel lucky that I've cultivated an eager audience (made up mostly of friends and family, but hey, technically, even one person is an "audience") with whom I get a chance to share choice moments from my life and the associated music that provided the soundtrack.
However long it takes someone to read one of these missives, I consider that sharing some quality time together. (As they'd say back in North Carolina, bless all y'all's hearts for stoppin' by for a visit.) And to me, spending time with people you enjoy, whether it's virtual or in the flesh, is pretty much the most important thing a person can do to stay mentally and emotionally healthy. Being present with another human being enriches your life and your soul. It enriches the lives and souls of those you're with, too. Connecting with good people connects you to the world.
This past week, I've been thinking a lot about the awesome people I've known, those incredible individuals that have brought something special to my life. Actually, one person in particular has been prominent in my thoughts. One very amazing person.
That person is Lou, my mom, who passed away five years ago this week.
Her death wasn't sudden, not by a long shot. Mom was in an agonizing decline for well over twelve years due to a particularly insidious form of dementia. Almost in slow motion, I watched a vibrant, funny, talented woman fade away right in front of my eyes. Thankfully, I was lucky enough to be at her side when she took her last breath, a surreal end to a truly surreal ordeal.
As the weeks went by, and the initial shock of her loss waned a bit, I came to realize that the most surreal thing about no longer having Mom in my life was that I was now the only one who remembered her. I mean, sure, my brother remembered her. Mom's brother Butch remembered her. All Mom's friends remembered her. But I remembered my Mom, a very specific woman with whom I had my own unique relationship.
Now my fevered mind is the lone repository of all the ephemeral memories that define the Lou that I knew, decades worth of simple but meaningful experiences and moments. Simple things like her reading to me before bed. Taking my brother and I on summer excursions to K-Mart for Icees. Both of us pelting Dad with bad puns. Giving her a hug after my grandmother made her cry. The two of us racing up the hill after hanging out the laundry. The entire family decorating the house for Christmas. Mom cooking Vienna sausages and baked beans on a Coleman stove at our Pirateland campsite. Seeing the look of pride on her face when I walked down the aisle at my college graduation.
The thing I will always cherish the most about Mom, however - the one thing that probably shaped our relationship more than anything else - was the goofy sense of humor we shared, a copacetic love of laughter that found its beginnings in the Saturday nights we spent side-by-side on the couch, enjoying the expert vaudevillian talents of...
CAROL BURNETT.
Me and my mom had a great relationship. I don't know if it was genetics, or being the first born, or what, but early on we developed a unique bond. Throughout my entire childhood, we never had any issues. We got along like gangbusters.
Because Mom's school job gave her the same vacation schedule my brother and I had, she was a constant presence in our lives. We didn't have to worry about being fobbed off on neighbors or family or daycare programs during school breaks. Instead, we got to stay home and just enjoy being dumb kids. During the dog days of the humid Southern summers, she took us on "field trips" to the mall every week. On Saturdays she dropped us off at the theater for the kid's movie matinee. She enrolled us in art and swimming classes at the YWCA. Despite not having a ton of money to spend on niceties, Mom found ways to keep us entertained.
It was during all that time together that Mom laid the foundation of the man I became later in life. She provided me with a powerful example of how to be a good person, of how to laugh and stay positive even when things in life were dire. Mom stressed the importance of education, making it very clear that her dream was to see both her kids get a college education so that we could "have the world". Even though I've erected countless new layers on that initial template she created, there's still a great deal of Mom present in the way I interact with the world. She was a great human being who raised her son to be one also.
Yep, Mom and I had a great relationship... until we didn't.
I can tell you the exact moment everything between Mom and I went off the rails. It was the second week of May in 1985, the day I came home after my first year of college was over. The week before, my friend Vickie had treated me to my first cool, moussed-up, early 80s, Mr. Mister-style New Wave mullet. After years of sporting a nerdy Lloyd Christmas coif, I finally had a current and trendy hairstyle. So I arrived home from school, happy and excited with the "new me". I walked in the door and right into Mom's waiting arms. "There's my boy!" she said, and we gave each other a big hug. Then she pulled back, looked at the top of my head, and groaned, "What happened to your hair?!?"
From that moment on, we started drifting apart. And it wasn't because I was rebelling, or I was on drugs, or I let some girl steal me away from my family. No, the chasm that started growing between us was an unfortunate side effect of Mom's success in seeing her dreams realized.
You know that story about the monkey paw? Where someone makes a wish on the paw, and the wish comes true, but there's some ironic twist that makes the result more of a curse than a boon? (I'm sure you've seen the episode of The Simpsons that parodied it.) That was what happened to Mom. She wanted me to have an education. She wanted me to have all the opportunities she never had. She wanted me to "have the world". Thanks to her, I got all those things. And once I had them, it was time for me to go off and lead my own life. Develop my own interests. Start my own family. Be my own person.
Mom hadn't prepared for that. It never occurred to her that as I grew up, as I became an independent adult, I would have a life that didn't revolve around her anymore. And forget about moving to the other side of the country! Mom couldn't handle anything about my individuality. She never stopped seeing me as a two year old toddler posing in his sailor suit at the Sears Portrait Studio. She made it impossible to have an adult-to-adult relationship with her, no matter how hard I tried.
For a long time, I was frustrated with Mom's inability to meet me halfway with regards to our relationship. As a result, we spent years - decades, even - with this unfortunate distance between us, a distance I could never bridge. But when she was diagnosed with dementia, whatever misgivings I might have had became inconsequential. Jon and I stepped up and made it our mission to take care of her as best we could.
Over the ensuing years, as I spent time with her, as I helplessly watched the mother I knew I and loved slowly fade away, I tossed all the resentment and regrets away. Instead of hanging onto the things went wrong, I chose instead to appreciate all the wonderful things she brought to my life when we were kids. We didn't have a lot of money, so we never could fill our house with material stuff. But our little home was never empty. Mom made sure that it was crammed to the rafters with three things: love, laughter, and music.
Mom looking stylish with Jon (in her arms) and me at our old house in Concord. Fall/winter 1971.
Mom had a great sense of humor. A phenomenal sense of humor, actually. There was never a moment when she wasn't prepared to pepper a conversation with something giggle-worthy. She loved silliness. Pratfalls. Goofiness. Wordplay.
If there was one comedic art form Mom loved the most, though, it was puns. A lot of people - I mean, a lot of people - can't stand puns. But not Mom. No matter the occasion, she could turn any innocent thing into a pun. It didn't matter how insignificant or dumb the association was: if Mom saw an opening, she took it. And I gotta say, I loved it. Mom and I bonded through punnery. We wielded them like blunt instruments, hammering the rest of the family with an endless stream of groan-inducing bon mots.
It wasn't just wordplay that got Mom going, though. You know how women complain that men communicate mostly through quoted lines from movies and TV shows? Well, one day some brilliant forensic sociologist will trace a direct line from dudes in the early 2000s parroting Budweiser's "WAAAASSSUUUUP!" commercials, to my mom sitting in her chair in front of our console TV in the 1970s. My mom was the god-mother of using dialogue from filmed entertainment as a secret Nell-like language.
If any one program could be considered the motherlode of over-quoted lines in our house, it was Mom's favorite series ever, The Andy Griffith Show. Because she grew up in a small Southern town very reminiscent of the idyllic Mayberry, the show held a nostalgic place in her heart. The daily reruns on the local CBS affiliate, WFMY Channel 2, were appointment TV in our house.
The Andy Griffith Show became the ur-text of my relationship with my mom. Otis, Gomer and Goober, Ernest T. Bass, Floyd, and especially the greatest second banana in television history, Barney Fife... Their classic one-liners became our one-liners. "She's niiiice." "What do you get? Heartache! Heartache!" "Nip it! Nip it in the bud!" "He's a nut!" "Well bless his heart." Out of context, those quotes probably don't evoke even a polite titter. But in the moment, they were perfectly-timed nuggets of pop culture homage, shared between a mother and son.
Mom hamming it up during a school assembly. She loved to make people laugh.
It wasn't just nightly sitcoms that gave Mom's spirits a boost. She also loved listening to music.
When she was a girl, my mom was very musical herself. She learned how to play piano. She sang in her local choir. She acted in school skits. I have a feeling she was a frustrated performer, someone who had that secret dream of being a big star on stage but never built up the courage to make it happen. So she expressed her unused talents through enjoying the art of others.
Mom owned a huge stack of 45 singles. During the weekends, when she was drafting Jon and I to help out with the household chores, she'd drop a couple of inches of vinyl on the stereo's spindle, and let them play one at a time. (This was the 1970s analog version of a Spotify playlist.) So while we were folding laundry, cleaning our rooms, and scrubbing tubs, our little one-story house resonated with Mom's favorite tunes.
Oh, right, I should clarify something from earlier. When I said Mom loved listening to music, I meant that she loved listening to her music. For being such a loving, generous, sweet lady, Mom transformed into a Bolivian dictator when it came to the records selected for housework day. None of our music ever made it into the mix. If Jon would ask to add Charlie Daniels' "The Devil Went Down To Georgia" to the stack of 45s, or I begged to include Nick Lowe's "Cruel To Be Kind" in the rotation, we were denied. My mother's unconditional maternal love for her darling children ended at the lid of the Fisher console.
So that means we got an earful of Mom's music collection, over and over and over, every single weekend. Her particular favorite genre was "shag music", a term that referred to the doo-wop-styled pop that was popular along the South Carolina coast. When she was in her early twenties Mom would go with her friends to the Boardwalk at Myrtle Beach for a night of dancing. She'd spend hours on the dance floor moving and shaking to bands like Little Anthony & The Imperials, The Platters, and her beloved Chairmen Of The Board. These artists and other similar groups compromised the bulk of her 45 collection, and they got a lot of regular play.
Then sometime in the mid-seventies, Mom loosened her purse strings a tad and started buying full albums. Classics like John Denver's Greatest Hits, Kenny Roger's The Gambler, Let’s Keep It That Way by Anne Murray, and the one that spent the most time on the turntable, the K-Tel collection The Best Of Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons. Once LPs entered the mix, we no longer enjoyed the "vinyl playlist on shuffle" experience that the 45s provided. Now we were subjected to entire album sides by one artist for hours on end. As Mom was humming along while she dusted tables and put away dishes, Jon and I hurried through our chores so we could get the hell out of the house and go play in the woods.
What's funny is, years and years later, all those songs and artists no longer aggravate the snot out of me. They comprise individual panels of the sonic quilt of nostalgia and fondness that wraps around my brain when I think back on those truly carefree days of my childhood. I hear the first few notes of "She Believes In Me", or "Take Me Home, Country Roads", or "My Eyes Adored You", and I can't help but smile. With her benign musical tyranny, Mom carved out a little oasis of happiness all for herself, a rare display of "me first" that she honestly should have done for herself more often.
Sharing a laugh on BART, heading for Alcatraz. One of the last photos of us together. I miss that laugh. Fall 2003.
For someone like my mom, someone who was so in love with sitcoms and music, her Holy Grail would have been a show that combined the two. A show that featured both hilarious comedic skits and theatrical song and dance numbers. A show that allowed its cast to be as funny as they could possibly be, while at the same time crooning a few tunes. A show that took the best parts of traditional vaudeville and updated them for a modern audience. If there were a show like that, you'd think my mom would've been all over it.
Well, there was. And she was. I'm talking about the one, the only, the classic: The Carol Burnett Show.
There have been a lot of variety shows in the history of American television, but Carol Burnett took the format and elevated it to a level never seen before or since. Sure, it had the campy musical numbers. Sure, it had the B-and-C-level "celebrity" guests. Sure, it had that weird orange-and-tan 70s design vibe. For today's viewers, it might be hard to swallow. It's definitely a time capsule of a bygone era of television.
When it came to the funny stuff, however, no other show could touch it. Behind the scenes, Burnett worked with veteran writers like Arnie Kogen and Roger Beatty, along with soon-to-be-famous novices like Barry Levinson and Jay Tarses, to create skit after classic skit. And in front of the camera, Burnett assembled what I would argue is the greatest comedy troupe of all time. Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence, and the one and only Tim Conway delighted in seeing how far they could push their antics before their co-stars cracked. And the characters they created! Mr. Tudball and Mrs. Wiggins. The Oldest Man. Funt & Mundane. Nora Desmond. Mother Marcus from "As The Stomach Turns". Eunice Higgins and her dysfunctional family. Every episode had something special to offer.
Carol Burnett ruled Saturday night for a good four years. And I was there for every episode, sitting next to Mom on the couch, the both of us laughing hysterically. We couldn't get enough of the silly stunts, the goofy costumes, and the clever wordplay. The Carol Burnett Show became such a big part of our lives, Mom and I bypassed quoting individual lines, instead making the effort to memorize entire skits! We were so obsessed with the show that we actually performed as Mr. Tudball and Mrs. Wiggins at her school's talent show one year. (Not to brag or anything, but we brought the frigging house down.)
As funny and entertaining as the show could be, however, I never got into the musical numbers. C’mon, cut me some slack… I was barely ten years old. The 70s variety show theatricality that was folded into the performances didn't appeal to me at all. Sometimes they'd add a little humor into the routine, which would hold my attention for a while. But for the most part, the final musical number that ended each episode went in one ear and out the other.
But then… When the show was ending, Burnett would step to the front of the stage and sing "I'm So Glad We Had This Time Together", the unofficial theme song of the show, written by her then-husband, Emmy-winning composer Joe Hamilton. It was a bittersweet musical goodbye, a "goodnight and farewell" that put an emotional button on each episode. The campy musical numbers may have gone over my head, but that theme song really affected me. It's like she was saying, "There's no more laughs this week. Time to go to bed. But we'll see you soon." When the song was over, and the credits were rolling, that meant my fun time with Mom was done. But I knew there would be more laughs coming our way in the future.
Until, unfortunately, the laughs ended.
Me as Mr. Tudball and Mom as Mrs. Wiggins, on stage at Jamestown Elementary. Circa 1978.
After Mom's passing, we put together a memorial for her back in North Carolina. With the help of some of her friends and family members, the word went out to everyone she knew. And we had an amazing turn-out. Co-workers Mom hadn't seen in years came from far and wide to pay their last respects, and to share their memories of their late friend.
At the end of the service, we asked everyone to join us in singing Carol Burnett's theme song. I couldn't find an instrumental version anywhere, so my good friend Jon Hayes, a mainstay of the Los Angeles music scene since the late 80s, recorded a simple piano arrangement for us. With champagne glasses raised high, a room full of people who loved Mom gave her a final farewell that she would have loved.
Lou is no longer with us. The world lost a good soul. A funny, loyal, whip-smart woman. A woman who didn't have the best role models in life, but did her damnedest to be a great mother and wife. A woman who could have been a huge star, if only she'd believed in herself as much as I did. (Mom could have been as big as Carol Burnett, but she never let herself dream that big.)
She may not have been a marquee name, but to the people who knew her, Mom was a star. Her influence is still felt to this day by all the friends and family whose lives she touched, especially me. The moments we spent together, the experiences we shared, the highs we celebrated and the lows we fought through... Her impact on the person I've become is incalculable.
I'm so glad Mom and I had our time together.
BIO
Don Stroud is not the famous actor and world-class surfer of the same name. He is the non-famous California transplant who became an award-winning film editor and - finally - an award-winning screenwriter. He loves cats, sushi, comic books, movies, music, and Cherry Coke. What's that, dear? Oh yes: and his long-suffering wife. You can follow him on Twitter, where he pops up sporadically, at @DonStroud2.