Hairy Toes

How could I grow up 'normal'?  Not a chance.  Mom lured a young deer into our car and brought it home from a park.  That crazy thing would sit on the couch with it's front legs on the floor like the rest of the family.  When it jumped up on her bed and urinated buckets, she decided it needed to go find it's parents and took it back.  Borrowed deer.  The ranger didn't say a word about that deer going for a visit.  Probably thought he was seeing things.

Once, a litter of the cutest baby skunks was crossing our driveway and she opened the car door and we all started chasing them.  Think we caught a couple. When she asked a vet about getting them de-scented, he was adamant that they might have rabies and it was not possible to keep them as pets.  

The one animal that she wouldn't ever let me have was a monkey.  On the wharf by Cannery Row in Monterey there was a hurdy gurdy man with the cutest little monkey all dressed up.  He would come around and hold out his cap when the wind up music played.   I really wanted one of my own, but mom hated them, said they smelled and had fleas.  No monkey.  I might need therapy for that one.  

We had every stray animal possible, as she couldn't bear for anything to be homeless or hungry. If it was injured, orphaned, an abused runt, helpless-she nursed it, bandaged it, fed it, kept it warm and cried if it died.  Us kids had a never ending supply of funerals to stage, all with very poetical, dramatic and grief stricken sermons, hymns, wooden crosses and burial plots. She's the reason I tried to incubate a bird egg, yes, nestled between my warm motherly breasts. It didn't work.  I tried to nurse the kittens and bandage frogs.  Craig has good naturedly stopped and let me pick up 'almost road kill' a few times, until watching the tragic deaths made me just look the other way and tell him to keep driving.   It's also the reason my milk almost feels like it is letting down when I hear a baby cry.   :)   I can't stand for anyone to be homeless or hungry either!   

Mom would gather us all together with banging pots and pans if she knew a big buck was going to be a target for a bullet.  Made the hunter soooooo mad after several failed attempts, he could have shot her.   

When we were in the car, trapped, that is the time she would practice yodeling.  She has a beautiful pure sweet voice, but no matter how hard she tried, it wouldn't 'break' like a true yodeler.   I tortured my children the same way, never could succeed either.   Why we had a yodeling fascination, I don't know-it's not in our gene pool AT ALL!  

Once when some friends were spending the night the little boy leaned over and whispered that my mom was a witch, and wondered if I knew.   I was horrified and asked why?  He told me that she had long hair and hair on her toes and could see from the back of her head.  Now, I hadn't noticed the first two, but it always had freaked me out that she could see and know what I was doing and thinking without seeing me or hearing me say anything outloud-so I considered that it might be true.   When I hesitantly got the nerve to ask her later, she laughed and laughed till tears came out her eyes and she couldn't breathe.   

Thankfully I have many many memories of mom singing and many more of her laughing till she cried.   Hopefully our girls will have memories of Craig and I laughing and singing....... Craig whistles, which is a very cheerful thing.     

Wonder when a mom loses that 'eyes in the back of your head' thing.  Freaks my girls out now when I do it to them.  

I'm not wanting to talk about hairy toes at this time, thanks.  (But is this normal?)