In a year, the Earth travels about 584 million miles.
It’s my Mom’s seventieth birthday today, which means she’s rocketed about 40,880,000,000 miles through the galaxy. It’s been a cool journey.
Today’s Moment of Science… SciMom.
Born to Canadian immigrants living in an Italian neighborhood in East Boston, Janice Margaret d’Entremont was my Memere’s fourth pregnancy and first child. At forty years old, they didn’t think Memere would be able to keep a pregnancy to term. Mom’s recounted to me the story of a doctor who didn’t believe my Memere that she had a baby because the doctor was so sure she couldn’t carry a full term pregnancy. She had to bring toddler Janice in to prove that, no, she wasn’t just some hysterical Cajun housewife with grandiose ideas that she’d produced a child.
My Pepere was an engineer, a WWII vet, and just the calmest human. My Memere, well. I inherited a propensity for telling people they’re being dipshits from somewhere. She had dirty jokes written down on napkins stuffed into her purse well into her 90s. Being an immigrant to the US who learned English as an adult, Mom witnessed her on more than one occasion letting someone fucking have it for getting huffy about how immigrants should only speak English.
(Mom’s a bit more like Pepere).
Mom spoke French pretty much exclusively until she was five. As is the case nowadays for little Acadian children growing up in my grandparents’ hometown in Nova Scotia, she learned how to speak English before school started. She developed no clear discernible accent in English except for when her inner Bostonian transforms the word ‘idea’ into ‘idear.’
She’s learning Spanish now and speaks it with a French accent. It’s super adorable.
Mom was valedictorian of a class of over 500, scoring something absurd on her SATs. She wanted to attend Boston University and someone in her class was all “you just don’t think you can get into Harvard.”
So she applied to Harvard and got in. She went to BU anyway. Boss.
Mom was an English major and took college courses in calculus and o-chem for funsies, as you do. She sang as a hobby (I grew up on her barbershop chorus music) and started teaching me and my brother to harmonize when we were barely in elementary school. She wanted to be an English teacher, and taught for over twenty years in every capacity from preschool to high school. In those years, she moved from Boston to a tiny town in NH, married and divorced my abusive cuntwhistle (alleged) criminal father, and managed to get me and my brother from fetus to college with, give or take, reasonable life coping skills.
She dated a few guys over the years following the divorce. I’m not sure when, but I think at some point she just decided men were too much of a fucking hassle and got a really cute dog named Rosie.
Mom was there for every single game, chorus concert, track meet. Everything. It didn’t matter if it was two minutes of playing time or a lead role, she was so proud of me and my brother. I wanted to use that scholarship to study theatre along with chemistry? Mom didn’t tell me I should study something more practical with those fully paid for credit hours. She just showed up.
I got my nose pierced, she said “it’s so cute!” I got a tattoo, she decided she needed one. I dyed my hair pink, she wants a pink streak now.
What I’m saying is she was born in 1951 and she has whatever the opposite is of boomer energy.
This has been your daily Moment of SciMom, wishing everyone at least one parent this cosmically spectacular.
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