Not Sports: Speech at my mother's surprise birthday party

Good evening. I’m Dave, Joyce’s youngest child, and I’m going to do one of my favorite things – talk about my mother. For about 10 minutes. First off, let me congratulate you for being here tonight. My mother does not suffer fools. She may work for them, serve them drinks, deal with them in customer service, and parent them on occasion… but suffer them? No. So, good on you for making it into the room. It’s no small accomplishment.

Look around. No one, except Mom, knows everyone else. That is a testament to just how remarkable, fluid, and *useful* she is. This is a person who has never stopped growing or adding value as a friend, parent, sibling, coworker or neighbor. There is always something more to do, a way to be better, think differently, consider something new. This is what we all get for knowing Joyce. The knowledge that more is possible, more is desirable, and you deserve it. Because you know her, and because you can be like her.

Every child thinks their mom is special, but I have proof. Every time I had a serious relationship that ended… the woman who was leaving asked about my mom. Some still do – decades later. I may or may not have been a good boyfriend, fiancé, or husband… but man alive, did they ever want to keep the mom. That’s because everyone wants more of her in their life. Who among us can say the same?

Why is my mother this way? I have theories. First, that she took exactly what she needed from her parents. Can you tell a story, never settle, and be completely comfortable in your own skin? That’s her father. Can you listen, put your own needs on hold, and make the ones you love know that you care and are rooting for them? That’s her mother. Can you keep moving forward and avoid apologies, complaints, or excuses while keeping what’s really important in focus? That’s my mom. And my role model.

Being a role model can take many forms. One of the more infamous stories of my childhood is sharing a bed with my brother as a small child, and wetting the bed… right into his ear. Which led my brother to, quite understandably, to react with profanity unbecoming of a 12-year-old,  leading my mother to investigate… and then fall down laughing when she got the story.  Now, think about what she *could* have done. She could have punished my brother, or me, or both of us. She could have taken it out on the entire family for costing her sleep at a time when she probably wasn’t getting any. She could have been consumed with worry about either of us and escalated it.  None of that worked as well as laughter. She made a great choice. She usually does.

Something else you should know about my mom – she lets me get away with a lot, including making everything about her right now, because I’m the youngest. And when I was a little kid, we lived in the suburbs with a backyard, which meant we had a place where pets could happen. Whether the pets were random dogs from my grandfather’s job sites, turtles repatriated from the woods, a sado-masochistic rabbit – there were pets. Also, for a summer, a duck that thought it was a rooster. If you want to know how all of these things found themselves in a rented backyard, ask Joyce. 

Here’s the point: all of the pets were healthy and well fed. In a house with three kids, with a garden. We had clean dishes without a dishwasher, meals without a microwave, with school lunches packed and laundry done, all from a single parent that worked until the bars closed and beyond. If you are wondering how that happened… you aren’t alone. It happened because she made it happen.

Do a small thought exercise for me. Imagine that every part of you – your physical realities and mental abilities, where you fell in the demographic and gender spectrum, what parts of you work the way they should or how you want them to, etc. – was something you had to pay for in a yearly subscription. How much would you pay to keep what you have? How much would you pay to get an upgrade? 

The reason I ask: we are all of us, every one of us who is above the ground, privileged. We live lives with the comforts of kings, with astounding technology in our literal pockets. We live so much longer than we used to.  We don’t appreciate it. We are all, actually, privileged. Especially everyone here tonight, because we all know my mom. The best of us share the fruits of our privilege. My mother shares her remarkable work ethic, her standards of living, her attention to detail. She doesn’t make you feel like you owe her, because it’s not about her sacrifice. It’s about her refusal to live without excellence, and her insistence on sharing and providing..

What else did she share and provide? Vacations. Cars. Sports equipment. Books. Fine meals, at home and out. Cable television and home computers and stereo systems and concert tickets and… seriously, Mom, how?

What she has shared didn’t *always* work out. There was the drive back to school in a rented car that we thought would be safer to drive in bad conditions. Nope. Mom and I spun about three full rotations on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, each of us telling the other that it was going to be fine just fine until we finally came to rest on the guardrail, miraculously without serious damage to our car or anyone else… and then just drove the rest of the way. Hours more, in the same storm and black ice. Because, well, we had to.

My mom does what she has to do, and the only person in the world who can tell her what she has to do is… her. You can convince her of a lot in this world, and she has a remarkably open mind, but once a decision is made and there is work to be done, work will be done. And if there is a task that has to be done, and my mother is involved, it gets done. If there’s Joyce, a task, and a wall, it’s a really bad day to be the wall.

About college – my mom didn’t make me go. What she made me do was listen to her when she told me that she didn’t care what I did for a living, so long as I loved it. I loved writing about sports, money be damned. Mom supported that every step of the way, buying groceries and providing transportation, excusing my absences during summers and holidays while I focused on the task, and supporting me as I mailed hundreds of letters, begging for a sports writing job, during a recession. When that failed and I had loans to pay, Mom didn’t make me feel bad about my “wasted” degrees. So, I worked as a temp and made music, and discovered that I loved making music more than writing about sports. Mom showed up at more of those gigs than some of my band mates. Never a word about wasting my life, talents, etc. Same thing through a number of jobs at startups. Never a moment of judgment. Never a word about how I should have gotten a business degree instead or gone back for my masters. 

In short, my mother trusts her children to do what’s right for their own lives. She raised grownups. God bless her. There aren’t enough of us around.

One more story. Over 15 years ago, some of her co-workers asked her to join a fantasy football league. Mom had never done any nerd betting before – she focused on the real stuff, which is to say picking teams against the spread – but she went along with them. Then gave me a call to be her co-owner. We crushed the league, so much so that when we got to the championship game, the guy we were playing against asked for a chop before the game. It wasn’t my money, so not my call – but Mom? Flat no. Couldn’t have been prouder. (And yeah, our guys got hurt and we lost. It happens.) Mom pursues excellence. She does not settle for less. Takes her shot, doesn’t whine if it doesn’t go her way. Grown up. Mom later joined my fantasy football league and has her own team. She’s also won it. I haven’t. I tell that to people all the time, because why not brag about my mom?

So, in summation, please join me in raising a glass to one of the best people that any of us will ever know on this, a round number. There will be many, many more, because the world does not want less of her, and she does not want less of it. If, for no other reason, than to keep kicking my ass in fantasy football. 

To Joyce!