Pardon?

MY MOM TO ME (casually of course, as I am doing my hair and she is watching the news) : Did you know I was a member of the Merchant Marines? I have my I.D. card somewhere....

ME TO MOM: What? I thought you were a flight attendant. (hostess or stewardess in the 60's)


Just when I think I have everything straight my Mom surprises me with some little tidbit from her life. I go around thinking I have been around long enough and should be hearing the same stories repeatedly. Which I do. I have the classics down. I think.

...Then she'll surprise us all at the table with some hilarious story. We'll be rolling on the floor laughing and crying, wondering why she has never told us the story of when she rode a real live horse right into a bar before!? Or about my Dad and his friends (they called themselves The Orchid Hunters) riding horseback across Mexico for three months!? Believe me, if I once had a cowboy boot filled up with beer by the bartender or won a shotgun at an old folks BINGO hall... you all would have heard about it by now.

That small little hand full of stories came to light in one sitting- Thanksgiving '05. (The Thanksgiving I cried in the closet holding my Dad's last can of olives.) And they keep coming. If you're ever bored, come to dinner with all the Jacobsens. I promise you won't be disappointed. (Maybe I'll even throw a dinner roll at somebody like I did here.)


Someone needs to write it all down. My Mom has lived 100 lifetimes worth of great stories, comedies and tragedies, and she is only 69. I beg her to write her history and I'm sure even I would learn new things about her. I keep one of her old Continental cards in my file box, along with my Dad's surveying card. I'll be in touch if the merchant marine card shows up. (or who knows what else.)