I Got It From My Mama

"Genes aren't designed to make us happy.

They design us to make more copies of themselves."

-- Joe Quirk,

It's Not You, It's Biology: 

The Science of Love, Sex, and Relationships

Mom 9-28-14

"The laws of genetics apply 

even if you refuse to learn them."

-- Allison Plowden

"Got a pistol for a mouth, my old mama gave me that."

-- Gin Wigmore, "Black Sheep"

My mom visited this weekend to watch Leo's football game.

The older I get, the more I see my mother in me. It's like a little sneak peek into what's rolling down the genetic hill in my direction.

There's lots of good stuff. Some potentially bad stuff. And a lot of stuff in the middle.

The similarities we share are startling, sometimes. 

There is physical stuff, for sure.  

But it's the stuff that happens below the surface that really gets me -- our behaviors, our tendencies, even our demons are very much the same. 

There are some of my mother's traits that I'm glad she passed on -- because of her skinny genes, I can wear skinny jeans. 

Others not so much. We both wrestle on and off and on again with addiction. We are both maternally-challenged. We both hate making phone calls. We can both cuss a blue streak (she taught me all the good swear words at a very tender age.)

I guess it's safe to say that this apple didn't fall from from the tree. 

It's a good thing it's a goddamn great motherfucking tree.

A Good Dog

"If there are not dogs in Heaven, 

then when I die I want to go where they went."

-- Will Rogers

Mama 7-14-14

"Here I wait, for my friend who's late. 

I will stay, just to walk beside you for one more day."

-- Jess C. Scott, Skins, Animal Stories

I'm not a real "dog person."

But I dearly love a couple of people who dearly love their dogs.

Fortunately, those couple of people happen to have remarkable dogs that are easy for me to love as well.

This is my mom's really good dog, Mama.

My God, this dog.

She's about as close as any dog has ever come to making me into a dog person.

Call it dumb luck, a happy coincidence, kismet or karma -- Mama was a stray who ran into my mother's backyard several years ago and never left.

The two of them look after each other in the most remarkably beautiful way.

I got to visit them both yesterday at my mom's house in Michigan.

As Mama was lolling on the patio, panting and exhausted from chasing her Chuckit! ball around in the afternoon heat, Mom said, rather tenderly and wistfully, "She's been a good, good friend."

And then there was just this quiet moment.

We kind of let those few words hang there in the atmosphere for a while as we appreciated the pure, simple truth of them -- as we appreciated the pure, simple goodness of a really good dog.

There was nothing more to say.