Thanks Mom

Today is Mother’s Day.

This is the day for all sons and daughters to honor the women who carried us in their wombs, suffered through our births and somehow managed to keep us alive until we could at least feed ourselves.

So, thank you, Beverly (that’s my mom) for doing all that for me.

But that’s not the mother I am honoring here.

Oh, I love my mother for sure. But there have been other women who had a big influence on me as well.

One was named Mama Joan.

In 1983 and I was a senior at the University of Georgia. And like a lot of people, I had foolishly joined a fraternity.

I’m not really sure how I wound up in this fraternity. I met some guys at a party. They invited me to come over to their fraternity house and we kept on partying.

And before you know it, I knew the secret handshake, all the letters of Greek alphabet and was one of them.

Like most fraternities at Georgia, we had a big house where a lot of the brothers lived, where they had meetings and, most importantly, where we could drink and be rowdy far from the ever-watchful eye of the university and the authorities.

Our fraternity house was a big white Greek revival mansion in a quiet street a couple miles west of campus.

If you’ve seen Animal House, you have somewhat of idea of what it was like around the fraternity house.

After class, a couple of kegs of cold beer would magically appear and the brothers would begin their nightly slide into a drunken stupor.

I was no angel, but up to this point, I had saved my intemperateness for the weekends.

Not these guys. Nightly debauchery was the norm for them.

And of course, when young men in their early 20’s throw back a few, things usually get out of control.

Broken furniture. Holes in the walls. Missing teeth. Police called.

It would have been a total Lord of the Flies scenario if not for one person.
Mama Joan.

I don’t know if it was a requirement by the university for fraternities to have a responsible adult resident or just a way fraternities tried to keep a little law and order, but every one had a ‘house mother.’ She was someone who lived in the house with the fraternity brothers, cooked meals, cleaned up enough to keep the property from getting condemned and generally tried to prevent the brothers from killing each other.

We didn’t know a lot about Mama Joan. None of the brothers could remember who hired her or where she came from.

There was a rumor that she was retired from a career as a drill sergeant in the Army and another that she was once an enforcer for the Gambino crime family and kept a switchblade hidden in her girdle.

All I know is that she was always at the fraternity house, day and night, and if things went a little off the rails, Mama Joan would miraculously appear and break up a fight, kick a violent drunk out the front or shame the brothers into acting like they had at least a little sense.

Mama Joan was built like a linebacker and I have to admit she scared me a little.

I didn’t really believe all of the stories about her but still, I wasn’t about to do something that would cause Mama Joan to whip out her switchblade and carve a little sobriety into me.

The thing about partying at the level these boys were at was that you couldn’t stay where you were for long. They were always looking for a better high. A wilder night. A deeper trip.

I noticed this after a couple months when one of the brothers asked me if I was coming to ‘pill party.’

I wasn’t sure what a pill party was, so one of the brothers explained with a laugh.

“It’s fun! All the brothers bring whatever drugs they have, or can get their hands, and we dump all the bottles into a big fishbowl.”

He went in to explain the that you took turns rolling a dice and whatever number you rolled was the number of pills you withdrew from the fishbowl and swallowed.

I told him this sounded pretty dangerous and the guy just laughed.

“Well, no one’s died yet.”

Yet?

The night of the Pill Party, I found something else to do.

Drinking was one thing but taking random pills? That wasn’t what I signed up for.

Still, I stayed in the fraternity thinking this was just a blip of bad judgement.

It wasn’t.

A couple of weeks later, another fraternity brother announced after dinner that his ‘buddy’ in Atlanta would be coming that weekend and he would have a big bag of ‘goodies’ with him.

There was a cheer from the brothers. Apparently, visits from this ‘buddy’ (translation: drug dealer) meant there was going to be a huge, blackout party.

Later that night, I asked one of the guys exactly what they meant by ‘goodies.’
He laughed and said, “Cocaine, man. What do you think?”

I will admit that I was raised a naive country boy from backwoods Georgia. I had never even tasted liquor until I went off to college.
A
nd now these guys were about to start snorting cocaine. Wasn’t that one of those drugs that turned you instantly into an addict the first time you used it?

I smiled and tried to act enthusiastic, but inside I was terrified.

I didn’t mind a few beers but hard drugs? I didn’t know if I was down with that.

I stepped out on the front porch to catch my breath and think. This was a pivotal point in my life and I knew it.

As I settled into one of the big rocking chairs, I heard a noise to my left. I looked over and saw Mama Joan, sitting in the farthest rocking chair smoking a thin little cigar.

I sat back and watched the cars passing by. After a few minutes, Mama Joan asked me why I wasn’t inside with the other guys.

I stammered some lame excuse and she laughed. Then she asked me what was the real reason.

And I told her.

When I finished, Mama Joan took another long drag on her little cigar and blew out a big cloud of blue smoke. And then with a voice that I imagined had seduced gangsters and hit men, she spoke softly.

“Is that what you want to become?,” she asked. “One of them.”

She hooked her thumb over her shoulder towards the guys in the living room, most who were already inebriated to the point that they were passed out face down on the floor.

I looked through the windows and for the first time saw these guys for who they really were.

They weren’t cool. They were a bunch of drunks and drug addicts. There were none- not a one- who I looked up to.

I turned back to Mama Joan and she smiled at me in the dark.

“You have the chance do something than none of those other guys have been able to do,” she said.

“What’s that?,” I asked.

She took another drag on her little cigar and spoke one word.

“Stop.”

I got up, went inside the fraternity house and gathered my stuff. Then I walked out the front door and never went back.

I have often wondered through the years how my life might have been different if it were not for my encounter on the porch that night with Mama Joan.

We all have mothers. And we should certainly honor those women today and every day. But some of us have also had women who stepped up and mothered us when we needed it the most.

So, Happy Mother’s Day to those women for being there. And for saving us.
Thank you, Mama Joan, for being a mom when I needed one. Wherever you are, Happy Mother’s Day.