Moms know everything, including good advice

By McAvoy Layne
Special to the Bonanza
May 9, 2008

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“Honey, get yourself a good bed and a good pair of shoes, because you’re going to be in one or the other.”

Those were my mother’s words to me as I left home at 17 to face the world without her. I did as she said and have had many a good night’s sleep and a spring in my step ever since.

Moms have a way of communicating with their sons. Dads do it more by example, but moms do it with words.

“Don’t tell all you know, honey, and don’t show all you have.”

That one has served me over the years.

Then there was a Twain quote she used before I was old enough to know who Mark Twain was: “If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything.” That aphorism, in spite of my mother’s and Mark Twain’s best efforts, has managed to elude me. I once overheard an unkind neighbor say about me, “I doubt you could squeeze the truth out of him with a cider press.”

Mothers, long after we lose them in this earthly realm, have a means of visiting us on a daily basis. I am alone in an elevator and suddenly inflicted with an itch in my ear. I’m about to stick my finger in there and rid myself of that itch, when I hear my mother’s voice: “Son, don’t do anything when no one’s watching that you wouldn’t do with a crowd watching.” So I tap my ear with my palm and live with the itch.

My father always knew my grades, but it was my mother who knew what grade I was in, and the names of my teachers and friends.

When it came time to date, Mom said, “Open the door for her, pull out her chair and ask to be excused if you have to go to the bathroom.” Each of those comportments I try to remember to this day. Dad merely said, “Drive slow, I’ve got the sheriff on your tail.”

If there is one shortcoming that my mother demonstrated, and she does not stand alone, it lies in encouraging sons to go to war in support of the country, when she has not sufficiently scrutinized that particular war as to its justifications. Were all mothers to scrutinize the justifications of wars more judiciously, I can imagine there would be fewer warriors available when the perennial war drums start beating their hypnotic rhythm.

My last Mother’s Day with my mom was celebrated happily at Hugo’s, which is now the Lone Eagle Grille. She was a little late and I told the waitress I would like a bloody Mary, but was waiting for the Queen of England and tradition had it that I not start before her.

When my mother arrived, that charming waitress greeted her with a curtsy, and afforded my mother every consideration and professional courtesy that might be afforded Queen Elizabeth. It was a gracious gesture that I have not forgotten.

My mother loved the Lake of the Sky, and for that I will be forever grateful, for were it not for her love for Tahoe, I might be hanging my hat in some other port today, and I might not have met the daughter-in-law that my mother would have loved as much as I do, a lady for whom I almost always remember to pull out a chair … thanks to mom.

McAvoy Layne is an Incline Village resident who visits area schools as the ghost of Mark Twain.