MUM’S THE WORD

May 04, 2009 Features / Columnists, Tony Deyal column

Pablo Picasso did it and Tiger Woods didn’t. What? Picasso used his mother’s surname. Had he used his father’s, he would have been Pablo Ruiz. Had Tiger used his mother’s surname he would have been Tiger Punsawad. If the famous and infamous used their mothers’ last names and not their fathers’, history would have immortalized Napoleon Ramolino (Bonaparte), George Ball (Washington), Abraham Hanks (Lincoln), Frank Garaventi (Sinatra), Mick Scutts (Jagger), Osama Ghanem (bin Laden) and Barack Durham (Obama).

While some women argue that in many cases the surname is the only thing fathers give their children, most men admit that their mothers are the most important people in their lives. Even Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein were very devoted sons.

Hitler’s mother, Klara, was a simple, uneducated Bavarian girl who became the mistress of her second cousin, Alois Hitler, whom she later married. When she died of breast cancer in 1908, Hitler was overcome with grief.

Saddam almost didn’t make it. His mother, Subha, considered having an abortion but a midwife talked her out of it. She could not take care of Saddam so he went to live with his uncle Khairaillah. However, when Subha died in 1982, Saddam built a huge shrine in Tikrit to honour the “Mother of Militants”.

Not all the famous are as devoted. When Nero was sixteen, his mother Agrippina poisoned the reigning Emperor Claudius 1, clearing the way for Nero to be proclaimed Emperor. However, he accused her of meddling in his affairs and arranged to have her killed.

Not everyone in power is as ungrateful. One of my Trinidadian friends called me complaining that some politicians were allowing their mothers to do their jobs or to interfere in political matters. He said he saw articles in the newspapers where the mothers of politicians, including Prime Ministers, were deeply involved in the nation’s business without being elected to office.

He told me that he saw a headline in the newspapers claiming that the Minister of National Security of Trinidad and Tobago, Martin Joseph, had brought in his mother to solve the incredibly high murder rate in the country. He was quite upset. “If his mother could do the job, why we paying Joseph?” my friend asked.

When I told him that I didn’t believe him he quoted a newspaper headline which read, “Joseph Mum On Crime Plans.” “And is not only Joseph,” he continued, “The Minister of Health, Jerry Narace is involved in that too. The papers say ‘Narace Mum on PAHO Dengue Report’ and then when the Prime Minister wanted to change some of the old guard in his party, they say ‘Manning Mum On Replacements’. What happen to these fellers?”

I almost told him that I, too, saw headlines from other countries which also gave the same impression. There was “Iraq Prime Minister Mum on Bush Plans”, the Bahamian Prime Minister “Mum On Political Future”, and there was even one where a newspaper claimed that a male leader, Israel’s former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, “Stays Mum.”

However, I didn’t have the heart to leave him in his ignorance and explained that in newspaper jargon, “Mum” means “to keep quiet.” He had the last word. “Keep quiet? I don’t know any mum who ever keep quiet in her life.”

Why should they when so many thrive on the continuous adoration of their sons. Three women were sitting in a beauty parlour waiting to be attended to and they got to talk about how much their sons loved them. The first one said, “You know the really expensive painting in my living room? My son bought that for my seventieth birthday. What a good boy he is and how he loves his mother.”

The second lady said, “You call that love? You know the BMW I just got for Mother’s Day? That was a present from my son Fred. What a son!”

The third woman boasted, “That’s nothing. You know my son Stanley who is a computer programmer in New York? He’s in analysis with a therapist on Park Avenue. Five sessions a week, two hundred and fifty dollars an hour, and what does he talk about all the time? Me!”

When they don’t get the homage they deserve some mums try to make their sons feel very guilty. One made a long-distance call to his mother and asked, “How you’re doing Mom?” “Not too good,” she replied, “I’ve been very weak.”

He was concerned, “Why have you been weak?” She explained, “Because I haven’t eaten in thirty-four days?” He was even more concerned, “Why on earth haven’t you been eating?” She said simply, “Because I didn’t want my mouth to be filled with food when you called.”

The guilt-trip and attempts to manipulate do not go down too well with all children. Bernie Mac, the entertainer, recalled, “In my day, adults were in control. Every time my mamma set down the law, she’d say, ‘I know you don’t like it, Bean, and I know you’re mad at me. But life isn’t a popularity contest.’

Good thing too. Lots of days she would have finished last for damn sure.” Heidi Joyce, the comedian, complained, “My mother is very possessive. She calls me up and says, ‘You weren’t home last night. Is something going on?’ I said, ‘Yeah, Mom, I’m cheating on you with another mother.”

Despite all the criticism and the occasional pent-up hostility, we love our mums. Comic Dennis Miller has this take on it, “A mother’s claim to your psyche is wholly substantiated because you love her. And you love her because she was your arrival terminal. She created you, so you always owe her and can never repay the debt. Being born is like asking Don Corleone a favour.”

While mothers might make you offers you can’t refuse, there are also the things you learn from them. There is “anticipation” as in “You just wait until your father comes home.” There is “logic”: “If the lawn mower cut off your foot don’t come running to me” and “If you go to the river and drown don’t come back and tell me nothing.” I have also learnt “genetics”: “You’re just like your father”.

There is also the cryptic, “When you get as old as me then you will understand.” Finally, there is the one every child has experienced: “Some day you will have children and I hope they turn out just like you so you will understand the nonsense I have to put up with. You will be sorry.” And I am.

As Dennis Miller also said, “You know you can put up a front in the real world, but your mom sees through that faster than Superman sees through Lois Lane’s pantsuits.”

*Tony Deyal was last seen quoting Dana Shaw, “I asked my mother if I was adopted and she replied, ‘Not yet, but we placed an ad’.”