Decoding Mom: It Helps to Have a Bun

My mother’s voice was giddy. She had just returned from a restaurant opening and was checking in by phone. She’s 74 but sounded like she was 7.

She raved about the food, the wine, the décor, the flowers, the guests. On and on, cooing like a schoolgirl.

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked when she finally took a breath.

She hesitated, then sheepishly uttered: “I have a bun.”

Me: “A bun?”

Mom: “Yes, a bun.”

Me: “A bun? Like a hamburger bun?”

Mom: “Yes, silly. A bun. I had two glasses of wine.”

Me: “Oh, you mean a buzz!”

Mom: “Bun. Buzz. Whatever.”

My own Mrs. Malaprop rarely drinks any wine, much less two glasses, but often mistakes one word for another. And the result is usually hilarious.

My favorite: One night she returned from a Chinese buffet with her brother, complaining about how stuffed she was. “We gouged ourselves!” she exclaimed, bringing to mind two senior citizens tearing at their eyes with chopsticks.

Then there’s the time a co-worker was telling her about getting a nut stuck in her throat. “Did they do the Heineken?” she asked.

Just last week, she helped me clean out a closet full of keepsakes and chided me for being too sentimental. “You’ve got a momentum for this, a momentum for that, a momentum for everything," she complained.

Mom's penchant for malapropisms began well before I was born. And she's a bilingual offender. Soon after my parents (both Greek) got engaged, my mom, who stumbles over tricky Greek pronunciations, held the requisite coffee for the elder ladies of the Greek Orthodox church. She faced the women and in her best Greek, asked whether they would like some sweets. There was a collective gasp. It turns out that the Greek word for sweets, with the accent on the wrong syllable, sounds like the Greek word for enema. I don't think Mom ever recovered.

So it’s no wonder that I love a good malapropism. Years after I hear one, I laugh out loud when it comes to mind. Some are so good they become lore among my friends, adopted into our regular banter.

“I can’t phanthom it!” we often say, in honor of the former co-worker who filled in the ghost for the word "fathom." And she did it a lot.

I like to recall the many callers at my former newspaper job, who complained about their local "physical court." I got a two-fer when they also asked to remain "unanimous."

I don’t even have to have hear a malaprop firsthand to love it.
There was the co-worker of my ex-husband who, during a meeting, chided someone for making a "mute" point. And the same man at the same meeting, after watching a woman eat several donuts, whispered, “Well, there’s no chance of her becoming dyslexic.”

I'm not alone in my malapropism fascination. A quick Internet search turned up some gems, many attributed to family members.

For all intensive purposes got numerous mentions. Others recalled talk of moving into a condom, people being self-defecating, writing off friends as persona au gratin, serenaded knives, civil serpents, plutonic relationships, nipping it in the butt and abstinence making the heart grow fonder. There was the man who gave his wife an organism. And the woman whose neighbor girl told her the story of Little Red Riding Hood with the phrase, "What big testicles you have."

My winner for the best new one I saw: "All the colors of the rectum."

Let's hope that my mother doesn't take up painting any time soon.

Friends, Family and Back Again

I’m wearing an orange XOXO silly band.

It was a gift from a 9-year-old, and an appropriate reminder of the week that he and his 10-year-old brother filled my home with hugs, kisses and the kind of wondrous inquiry seen only in adolescents.

I also got a few hugs and kisses from their mother – an old friend I never get to see enough.

We could have missed it all. Because the woman is my ex-husband’s sister and the boys are her sons.

They’re not technically my nephews anymore, a coworker reminded me as I was chattering on about plans in advance of their visit. She’s right. But Miss Manners be darned. We’re not going to let a technicality get in the way of this aunt/nephew relationship.

As for the relationship between Liz (yes, her brother married a woman with the same name, but we’ll save that exploration for a future entry) and me, we wouldn’t have it any other way. We've loved each other since the moment we met 24 years ago – she the 18-year-old who just graduated from high school and me the 22-year-old infatuated with her only sibling.

Like any long friendship, we’ve had our shared experiences: bridesmaid service times two, family gatherings in joy and sadness, a couples Caribbean cruise.

So it was only natural that we’d pick up where we left off. We had sushi, got a mani-pedi, saw a play under the stars and sipped midnight champagne in my best glasses. We also shared kitchen duty and laughed until we cried, just as we do every time we get together.

I introduced her as my former sister-in law/the sister of my ex-husband/my son’s aunt/my good friend. And then we’d laugh.

I didn’t divorce her or her kids when I ended my marriage. But the way I see it, that doesn’t automatically keep my place in her life – or hers in mine. We got there through intellectual and emotional honesty, like you earn, and continue to earn, any friendship. We got there by enjoying each other’s company because we enjoy each other’s company, not because of family obligations.

I reaped my reward with her last week, and with my nephews, Louie, 10, and Dino, 9. And to think, I might never have gotten an XOXO silly band, tasted lemon custard ice cream or gotten misty-eyed at Ramona and Beezus.

I might never have seen loveable Dino stroking the velvet ears of my beloved dog, Annie, or heard precocious Louie point to the pill next to his cereal and volunteer, “This is a dietary supplement.”

We could have missed it all. I’m surely glad we didn’t.