My Mom’s awesome. Ok ok, I know, everyone’s mom is awesome except that mom in the news lately who’s using fertility treatments to shoot kids out of her hoo-ha faster than a hoo-ha does things quickly. I keep trying to tell people she’s breeding an army, one that can move in sunlight and cover great distance at speed.
But I digress.
For her 60th birthday Momto only wanted one thing, for me and my two brothers, along with our better halves, to converge in one place with her to celebrate. Figuring Momto’s wish was really just to spend time with all of us together uninterrupted, we developed an elaborate plan to…spend the better part of the day with her and to cook her a fancy five course meal with all the trimmings. CRAZY HUH? I should add, we went a bit further, buying her a new shiny Toshiba laptop running Windows 7 to replace her five year old VIA based Windows XP machine, along with a swank carrying case Jeff and Scott picked out. Oh…
A word about naming conventions. Stepto originally came about as a name when the Microsoft Amazing Technicolor Account Creator mashed “Stephen” with “Toulouse” inside of 8 letters and decided “Stepto” would be my Microsoft alias. After it became my nickname, my family started adopting the convention. My middle brother, who's full name is Jonathan Scott, is Joscoto. My wife Rochelle, is Rochto. My mom of course is Momto. But in the end, the outlier is the cleverest bit: My youngest brother Jeff, who, when confronted with this perverse Internet bastardization of our family name requested that he be: Toulouto.
I will forever hate him, for being that recursively clever.
Aaaaaaanyhoo.
I’ve relocated from our ancestral home in the ancient sandstone fortresses of Dallas to Seattle, and Joscoto has relocated to Estes Park, Colorado.
I pause to note the trend that our new locations offer 100% more snow and 25% less peak summer temperature. Toulouto, probably because he knew he should pay a price for choosing a recursive nickname, stayed in Dallas. In each place they met their respective better halves. For Toulouto, Laura. For Joscoto, Kellen. While neither have married, thus forcing the issue, I’ve often chuckled at Laurto and Kellto as nicknames. Such it was that since Momto was in Dallas along with her boyfriend David; myself and Rochto, Joscoto and Kellto (hee hee) endured the black heart pumping thick cords of dark and oily pudding that is our national air transit system. And normally, I like pudding.
Rochelle and I were in for a lightning trip. Between work and her school, we could afford exactly 18 hours of conscious time in Dallas. We landed at 5:45 Dallas time on Tuesday night (Rochto’s mom picked us up, affording her time to spend with her). By 7:30am Thursday, we were in the air to Seattle. With time short, we had several things to accomplish.
I had already prepped the new laptop with Momto’s essential applications like iTunes, Office, and um…Mahjong. Our first night was a mission to get Crawfish since Rochto and I arrived so late. And so it was that, surrounded by pints of Shiner Bock and piles of Etoufee, fried tails, and boiled crawfish, we eased back into our family dynamic. You can go home again, despite the famous quote. It just involves a table, family you get along with, and a nice dollop of social lubricant Alcohol.
I miss being with my mom and my brothers. I didn’t really realize it until we were back together. My younger brothers are masters at humor, they really are. Often times they riff on something and I manage to tie into it and I always feel like I’m just keeping up. Leslie Nielsen has been quoted as saying something to the effect that he never understands why people find him funny, he says his lines with deadly seriousness. It’s rare that me and my brothers crack each other up. Far more often, it’s the case that we’re talking and riffing off each other and we stop to realize everyone around us is laughing. I’m glad we had that dinner the night I arrived, We’d never been all together in front of our long suffering significant others. I think it helped prepare them. And it helped me amp my A game for jokes.
The morning of my mom’s birthday started out with a trip to Highland Park Cafeteria for an early lunch with my Aunt Lea and Uncle Paul, my Maternal Grandmother (Grandma) and Momto’s step-mother Gene (Gene). By early I mean 11am (9am our time) and in a place where the normal clientele thought 11am represented a late lunch. Rochto had injured her knee severely before the trip and was walking with a cane and she was Tyson Gay compared to everyone else in the line. But there’s only so many jokes I can make about being a fat man in a Luby’s at the age of 36 when Grandma is well into her 80’s and, though well under five foot, would kick my ass.
We endured bad southern cafeteria food (what did they do to the salmon? I’m from Seattle I know, but Salmon isn’t supposed to look like ET’s foot) and surprised my mom with her new laptop. My Aunt Lea quite literally squealed at Windows 7, especially it’s new version of solitaire. No really. Someone should tell the marketing folk, Win7 is a huge hit with the nearing 60 set. I was just happy Momto loved the laptop and was excited over a new machine.
Momto up until this point had been in the dark about the day’s plans. Toulouto had leaked out a carefully laid plan through various relatives where he actually got Momto to believe we had paid extra to rent out the local Chuck E. Cheese ballroom for $150. We whisked her over to David’s place and began the real celebration.
The menu was fairly simple:
Caprese Salad with tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil
Clam Soup
Seared Ahi Tuni and Seared Filet Mignon
Braised Beef Shortribs
Crème Brulee
The drink? Tons of wine, and loads of Shiner Black and the 100th anniversary brew. Oh yeah and Maker’s. Pictures were taken, stories were told. Many of which I will write here shortly, but what cracked me up were the women and how quickly they snapped to our humor and how we all interact. My favorite moment was the exchange we had over my being the executor of Momto’s will.
Momto: “I want you all to have the house, and you can sell it and split it”
Stepto: “Mom we’re not selling the house, we’ll keep it”
Momto: “Who’s going to stay in it?”
Toulouto: “We’ll turn it into a homeless shelter”
Momto (shocked) “what about the rest of the will, if you are going to ignore it?”
Joscoto: “Like what?”
Momto: “My beanie baby collection, where is that going?”
Kellen: “Easy, to the Indonesian child laborers that made them!”
Yeah. I don’t care who you are, that’s funny.
The entire event as judged by Momto was a success. Many great memories and stories were rehashed that I was going to put in this post but we’re way over limit.
Happy birthday Mom. Rochelle and I miss you. Oh yeah and I guess I miss my brothers too. Sorta I guess.