Mom’s Day My mother was probably happy the day I was born. After all, how could she know? How could she know that in just a few short years Teddy Blaine and I would pry the lid off his family’s septic tank and have a “mud” fight with the contents. How could she know that as soon as I was strong enough to pull the top off a can of green paint I would do so and use the sticky substance to cover her license plate and my entire pudgy body. And then try to conceal my still tacky self in a bin full of grain. Could someone have warned her that, as a teenager, I would stagger home in the wee hours of the morning with teeth missing or ribs cracked or one eyelid torn in half. Or that, on one night of the many I never showed up, an anonymous caller would interrupt her sleeplessness to ask if I was in the hospital and then hang up before she could find out why. I can picture her now, a poor unsuspecting soul proudly holding her infant son, confident her offspring would grow into a fine young man who would never have his name on the police blotter for speeding, reckless driving, breach of peace, trespassing, resisting arrest, aggravated battery or failure to obey authority in any way, shape or form. She must find a certain irony in her youthful naiveté as she marvels at how her little bundle from heaven managed to get kicked out of CYO. Was it the devil who guided her innocent child when he was noticed dancing indecently with a tall blonde at a church social activity? Only the child and the blonde will ever know for sure. I have heard it said that the fate of an infant can be seen on the wrinkles of its head. If mom had read my wrinkles she would have ditched me in a train station then caught the next flight to Pago Pago. The wrinkles on me put wrinkles on her at a ratio of about 12 for 1. By the time I was 13 she was spreading Oil of Olay on her pancakes. Even after years of struggling under the burden of raising Damien’s alter ego my mom is as kindly as ever. She won’t hurt a thing. If she spots a few ants milling around in her kitchen she uses jelly to coax them onto a paper towel, then gives them the bum’s rush. Sort of in flight strawberry preserves as it were. Today is Mother’s Day and mine will probably celebrate it like everyone else’s. “After all, she’s already paid the fiddler, she might as well dance.”