Eyeballs Wide Open

(Turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-Changes
Don't want to be a richer man
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-Changes
Just gonna have to be a different man
Time may change me
But I can't trace time
-  David Bowie


And the Mama; she leaves on Monday. It is going to be surreal living here without Mum. 

Mel and I always said, It's tough to raise a single-parent these days. And now..;

Wednesday morning at five o'clock as the day begins
Silently closing her bedroom door
Leaving the note that she hoped would say more
She goes downstairs to the kitchen clutching her hankerchief
Quietly turning the backdoor key
Stepping outside she is free

She (We gave her most of our lives)
Is leaving (Sacrificed most of our lives)
Home (We gave her everything money could buy)
She's leaving home after living alone
For so many years (Bye bye)
-The Beatles

But I am so happy for her. She's going back to the Motherland. Mel and Jan are right there so I think it will work out quite nicely. She's a brave one, Mum. 

I remember once I was having an asthma attack and she was getting ready to inject me with black market adrenaline she had bought from Jose Canseco's distant relative, also know as Steroid Papi. Just as she was about to pull the trigger, a bear burst through the door to my bedroom (I would have pissed myself, but I didn't have even enough air in my lungs to force my pee out.)

I still remember it like it was yesterday. She jabbed the syringe into the upper meat of my left arm. I was going to be okay and breathing comfortably soon, but what about the fucking bear?! As the bear came at her, she used her left arm to shield her face and hammered the syringe into its throat. Amazingly, she had hit the jugular directly. She tore it down to the right as she pulled it out. 

The bear was pissed! It roared and stepped forward. Now I was going to soil myself as well, (if I ever had enough air.) 

But suddenly it jolted forward, and this large brown bear, pulled itself backwards in an effort to take control. But by now, the blood was matting itself like a hairy waterfall down the bear's belly. When it went down, it pitched forward and hit the ground with it's chin. Three of it's front teeth spilled out.

"Take it easy, baby," she said. "Pamela Jean's got you now."

When I awoke the next day, it was almost 7 PM. The adrenaline had kept me up til noon. Mum said, "Don't sweat it. She had had three hours sleep worked all day and then somehow had cooked my all time favorite, beef wellington, in an hour and a half.

And the next time I lost a tooth, I got a dollar and the bear's three monstrous teeth which I still have to this day, and wear only when I go to a High Mass at the Vatican.)

Best mum ever!

True story.

Editor's Note; "In North Jersey, during the 70's and 80's, there were reports of brown bears showing up in very residential areas of New Jersey. How the bear was not noticed on the Boulevard, how it broke and entered, and why it appeared on the second floor, are inexplicable. Mum never reported it. She always had a few bags of lye around for "situations." Mel buried it in the backyard in the middle of the night.