My mother and I were living on a prayer and hoping for a miracle.
As we glided into the store parking lot on two wheels, we were on a mission. I had exactly 12 hours to produce a cell model for my science class the next morning.
Pay no mind that we knew about this project for weeks. It was just in our nature to wait until the night before to put the pen to the paper.
I don’t think my mother even put the car in park, and when the security guard told her she was illegally parked she informed him to tow it, among other things.
Grabbing a buggy, Momma looked like one of those NASCAR drivers taking the curve into the arts and crafts aisle.
“I’m hungry Momma,” I moaned, as I ran behind her.
“You can eat when we get home,” she bellowed. “The macaroni we don’t use for the cell...we’ll cook it later.”
Momma began grabbing an assortment of items. Dried macaroni, cashew nuts, pipe cleaners, gummy worms, mandarin oranges, Jello and a few apples...all in the buggy.
Exactly nine minutes later, we had paid for our stuff and were heading back out the door to the illegally parked car sitting on the sidewalk in front of the store.
We screeched up to our apartment, barreling through the front door.
Momma poured the bags out over the kitchen table. It looked like lava coming out of a volcano, knocking over her decorative centerpiece.
“Pick that up,” she said, pointing to her collapsed floral arrangement. “There’s floral wire in there. We can use that.”
Plugging in her glue gun and putting Michael Bolton in her tape player, Momma was ready to make a cell model.
I would like to say that I did most of the work, but that would be a lie. I think I bent one gummy worm.
“Just let me do it,” she said. “I don’t want you to burn yourself with this glue gun.”
“But I have to be able to explain it,” I said.
“I’ll write notes on the back of the poster,” she said. “We’re getting an A if it kills us.”
After glueing her fingers together twice, barking at me about eating the gummy worms and locking the cat in the bathroom after she caught it chewing on a pipe cleaner...the cell was complete.
“I don’t think that is a part,” I said, pointing to an apple slice.
Momma just ripped it off and blew on it.
“You could still probably eat that,” she said.
I wasn’t sure if she was joking or not. Momma had a wild look in her eyes. I think she was balancing herself on a tightrope of logic and insanity.
But stepping back and looking at my project, it didn’t look so bad. And after a macaroni supper, I went to bed right with the world.
I was happy to bring home an A that afternoon. I think Momma was more excited than me.
It was yet another challenge that we solved together.
And it’s a cycle that continues to this day.
“Momma,” I screamed into the telephone, 14 years later. “I need your help.”
Like mother, like daughter.
I had waited to the last minute to complete my son James’ costume for his school play.
“I’ve got five hours to make James into a spider,” I cried. “All I have is a black sweat suit. He has no arms. How can he be a spider with just two arms?”
“I can be there in two hours,” Momma replied, cranking up her car.
Momma was already en route, and I had faith that she would come through.
Exactly two hours later, Momma fell through my front door with newspapers, black tube socks and safety pins.
And we went into action. Within 20 minutes, we stuffed the newspapers into the tube socks and safety-pinned them onto James’ sweater.
Boom...instant spider.
Wiping the sweat off our faces, Momma and I gave each other a high five. Dabbing fresh powder on our noses, we headed to the school play.
And we walked in that gym like it was a role James was born for. As he flapped his tube sock spider arms around, Momma was grinning beside me.
“I told you we could pull it off,” she whispered. “You need to just sit back and take notes.”
And Momma was right. Despite the hectic shopping trips, late nights, speeding tickets, glue gun burns and cats choking on pipe cleaners....I never missed a project.
Momma made sure of that.
I hugged Momma goodbye in the parking lot that night and thanked her for saving the play.
But I noticed a glue gun in her back seat.
“What,” she asked. “Did you think this was fun and games? Always have a glue gun ready.”
I laughed as I watched her drive off, and then I breathed I sigh of relief that things didn’t get serious enough to require the glue gun.
