I almost died laughing the other day. But before I get to the humiliating part, I’ll begin with the foundation for all my amusement and optimism: Love.
What would the world be without mothers? A mother is the one—if not the one—being who desires you, adores you, cares for you well before your birth. A mother’s love never changes, never ages, never fluctuates with the comings-and-goings of a friend’s companionship or with the waves of a lover’s passion; it need never strengthen because it was unshakable from the start; it need not grow because it was fathomless to begin with. I cannot argue that it is the greatest love in the world—for a father’s love, a twin’s love, a soul-mate’s love, are all the greatest in their own way—but it is certainly an encompassing love, and lends its nurturing shades in those other types of love, as a child or wife or husband may learn from and adopt a mother’s immeasurable tenderness and consideration within their own relationships.
My mother always tells me that while I may feel her love already, I will only completely understand it when I, too, and a mother. I have no objection to this; I cannot argue until I experience that. But already, I have found many things in common with this woman who was once so much older, but who, as years go by, is just as older but her spirit seems younger—or perhaps hers is steady and mine is merely aging to bridge (as much as possible) the generational gap. At the same age we moved to a different country; at the same age we began to cook; at the same age we met a man who we love and pledge ourselves to forever.
This dual-country, dual-citizenship existence has many pros (and a few tiny cons—but that’s another tale), one of them being the endless supply of amusement we gain from the linguistic and idiomatic mistakes we inevitably make when speaking in our “second” language. Sometimes when I speak Greek, albeit “fluently” compared to my peers in America, I wonder when all the mirrors in the house will start breaking. Other times, I find myself making someone’s day by saying something beautifully ridiculous and stupid out of ignorance. I am constantly lost in translation, but most of the time, I don’t mind; it’s a very colorful and creative labyrinth.
So just the other day I was running around in the kitchen “chased” by a gigantic (tiny) black spider. I hollered at my mother to get out of the way as I sprinted to the roll of paper towels (and no, I don’t much care if harming spiders is back luck—you try telling me that when you find one dangling above your bed. Throw snakes and mice at me as much as you want—the insects stay out). I slipped and tripped and didn’t reach the spider. My mother coolly grabbed a napkin.
“No more itsy mitsy spider,” she says happily.
“Itsy mitsy spider?” That’s when I almost died laughing. “What?”
“You know,” she said, looking at me with bright warm black eyes. Her accent was thicker than churned butter. “The itsy mitsy spider…” She hesitated; it’d been a couple decades since she’d taught me the ditty.
“Climbed up the water sprout?” I finished. She nodded enthusiastically. “Itsy bitsy spider, mom.”
“Ah. Okay. Itsy mitsy spider.” Cool and calm, just like that. Then, because I was hyperventilating by then, she couldn’t help laughing either. It wasn’t just that she got the “bitsy” part wrong; she’d just baptized All Spiders in our house, from this day forth, without realizing it. Because “Mitsos” is a Greek nickname for the popular male name “Dimitri,” which also happens to be the title of seven of my cousins and dozens of my friends.
My mother finally smushed the spider. “Nooooooooo,” I groaned. The creature had a name. How could we kill it. “You killed Mitsos!!!”
My mother turned around and gave me a look that said it all—the “what the heck are you saying,” “this is just too hilarious,” “didn’t you want me to kill it?” “my stomach already hurts from laughing,” “I love you to pieces” look. I resolved we shouldn’t kill spiders anymore.
What can I say? It’s the little things in life that last.
"Angreek87"
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