An Incomplete List of Things I Wish My Mother Would Do

1. Say, “I know you accuse me of only telling you about when someone dies but, [someone I will not immediately recognize] died on Thursday.”
2. Buy another terracotta colored sweater.
3. Listen to me complain about someone not doing something the way I think they should’ve done it and then remind me that “it takes all kinds of people to make the world go ’round.”
4. Send a screenshot to the group text of a Facebook ad for a t-shirt about being a grammar snob and say “Laneia look.”
5. Stare off into space.
6. Fall asleep to the ID channel.
7. Answer the question I meant to ask her last week.
8. Tell me what I wrote for her funeral was perfect.
9. Forgive me.
10. Make the deviled eggs this year.
11. Send me something that’s monogramed.
12. Leave behind her airport copy of People magazine.
13. Maintain that it’s good parenting to let kids sing the cuss words.
14. Light a cigarette on the wrong end.
15. Say that she loves me “muchly and morely.”
16. Ask me to reheat her coffee again.
17. Ask me to check the back of her hair for a flat spot and, should one exist, fluff it out with a purple and teal plastic pick and then spray the whole thing with Paul Mitchell Fast Drying Sculpting Spray.
18. Say “Do what now?” instead of “What did you say?” or “Come again?” or even just “What?”
19. Specify that she’d like the bacon to be extra crispy.
20. Ask me when Eli’s high school graduation is again.
21. Ask me to “fix [her] some ice water” and then rock the cup a little from side-to-side to make the water colder faster.
22. Disregard my recommendation about a TV show that I already know she won’t watch.
23. Complain about how hot the house is when the temperature creeps above 71°.
24. Call me a blogger.
25. Tell my girlfriend’s parents about the time she took my bedroom door off its hinges because I kept slamming it.
26. Tell me to be quiet she’s on the phone.
27. Tell me to slow down the speed limit is 60.
28. Tell me again about the time they confiscated her brass knuckles in the 8th grade.
29. Decline the sour cream on the baked potato.
30. Tell her yet to be conceived great-grandchildren that “there’s nothing here in the dark that isn’t here in the light,” and then leave the hall light on anyway.
31. Let me borrow that scarf.
32. Tell everyone that I was “off finding [myself]” when I was simply living in California.
33. Do the tip math in her head.
34. Sing along to “Tiny Dancer” while she sweeps the dining room floor.
35. Explain how she came to decide that I was old enough to watch Pet Sematary but not Dirty Dancing.
36. Take off her bra after work and leave it on the arm of the sofa all night.
37. Say that she thinks they make the commercials louder on purpose.
38. Ask me if I want to come outside with her.
39. Text me for Mema’s cheese ball recipe.
40. Tell me that they doubled the Worcestershire sauce and lemon juice this time.
41. Tell my girlfriend the story of the time she made me get on Space Mountain and as we rounded the first curve and I yelled “I am gonna puke!” that she believed me, and quickly made peace with the fact that she would likely be covered in it.
42. Put a little pile of Fritos on a little paper towel.
43. Wake me up.
44. Request the cool toned edition of the Lancôme gift-with-purchase so she can send it to me.
45. Stay up late watching M*A*S*H.
46. Look at the menu beforehand.
47. Lick an envelope flap in three places.
48. Explain who someone is by telling me their parents’ names and occupations, who their cousin graduated with, any jersey number they might’ve had, who they dated in the late 90s.
49. Tell me what we were doing this time last year; this time six months ago; this time last week.
50. Tap my shoulders to the opening beat of “All I Want for Christmas” from the backseat.
51. Roll down the window while letting me know that the smell of my watermelon bubblegum is making her nauseous.
52. Annoy me.
53. Embarrass me.
54. Disappoint me.
55. Agree with me.
56. Need me.
57. Call me.
58. Hurt my feelings.
59. Be too busy for me today.
60. Put her earrings on last.
61. Choose a nail color. Think better of it. But wait yeah, still choose that nail color.
62. Ask me what size the boys are wearing now.
63. Tell me where my rings are. (On the end table, 1993)
64. Tell me where my rings are. (In the other jewelry box that’s still packed, 1999)
65. Tell me where my rings are. (On the counter in the downstairs bathroom, 2003)
66. Tell me where my rings are. (On the coffee table in a small glass dish, 2007)
67. Tell me where my rings are. (On the counter in the downstairs bathroom, 2012)
68. Tell me where my rings are. (She grabbed them from the center console so, in her jacket pocket, 2019)
69. Tell me where my rings are. (In the garage? On the window ledge above the kitchen sink? Check my desk and the bathroom drawer, too. 2023) (Actual location: window ledge above the kitchen sink.)
70. Grab a bottle of shower gel and lotion from her Bath & Body Works holiday stash in the closet under the stairs when I need a last minute Christmas gift.
71. Slide the hangers across the rod — click, click, click, click — pause and say, “This is cute.” click, click, click.
72. Tell my kids about the time she came back out to the car from the post office holding a 10 CD collection titled Time Life Presents the 60s, asking if I was aware of what COD actually meant.
73. Fix my hair like Meg Ryan’s in Sleepless In Seattle, when they’re in the attic.
74. Remind me of the time she sent my grandmother to pick me up several days early from 4-H camp because I was homesick.
75. Call me at 6:43am central time on my 43rd birthday.
76. Open her bathroom window upstairs because she got too hot blow-drying her hair.
77. Recite a high school football cheer from memory.
78. Find every four-leaf clover in a 100ft radius.
79. Walk with me through the buffet line.
80. Say that Little Miss Helpful was written about me.
81. Defend her decision to lie to me about what happened to Camo, my calico cat, while I was at my dad’s house for the weekend.
82. Turn 62 today.
83. Order the fried zucchini.
84. Assert that she would’ve made a good mob wife because she’s good at keeping secrets.
85. Draw a small X on the windshield because a black cat walked in front of her car.
86. Share any tips on surviving the bargaining stage.
87. Say that actually she thinks she does have [absurd thing I just asked for] in her purse, hang on.
88. Comb my hair after the shower.
89. Lament losing her mother’s engagement ring in a field in 1976.
90. Walk through the lobby of a government building in heels.
91. Tell me it won’t always feel like this.
92. Tell me I’ll be just fine, that I don’t have a choice.
93. Tell me to restart “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” because I started talking.
94. Wear the red t-shirt that has a picture of a basket with a note in it that reads, “Dear Dorothy, Took the slippers. Find your own way home. Love, Toto”
95. Make sure I still have the stuffed Woodstock that came with her Snoopy.
96. Put the dandelions in a bud vase.
97. Say, “Well don’t you look spiffy.”
98. Send me a grocery list the week before her flight.
99. Prefer a booth if they have one.
100. Answer on the first ring because she was just about to call me.

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