THE CAT IS DEAD, PUT HER OUT FOR GARBAGE: Don't throw away the Angel.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Don't throw away the Angel.

Dear John,

If you decide you don't want this angel, please return it to me. I want you to have it, it was our very first Angel since 1976 and I don't want it thrown away.

Love,
Mom

Note that accompanied a plastic angel she left for me, to put atop my Christmas tree in my first apartment. There was also a post-it note stuck to the Angel's chest that said "Return to Mom," just in case I missed the first note.

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ABOUT THE BLOG

I love my Mother with all of my heart, and these are her words.

The Cat is Dead, Put Her Out For Garbage was an idea I came up with as a teenager a long time ago (circa 1994), after receiving so many notes from my Mother that I couldn't help but start collecting them. As I grew up and made friends, I realized that all of their Moms left them notes too. But somehow all along I knew my Mom's notes were . . . well, different from the rest . . .

Over the past 15 years or so I saved only the best notes in file folders -- there was no way I could have saved them all, but I knew that one day I would find a purpose for them. So, here we are in 2011 -- welcome to The Cat Is Dead, Put Her Out For Garbage!

A little background . . .

Growing up, most of the communication between my Mother and I was through notes. I would wake up in the morning and roll over to a note taped to my nightstand that read "See note in kitchen." I'd make my way into the kitchen for breakfast & there it was on the table: her hand-written expression of unconditional love, which was often overshadowed by the ramblings of an over-bearing, outspoken, undiagnosed bi-polar maternal figure.

Some of her notes outlined my tasks for the day while she was at work; others were outlets for her anger & frustration with my rebellious teenage nature. Never-ending reminders to do the most obvious things, making mountains out of molehills, and rarely presenting her thoughts on a "positive note" (no pun intended). "Vacation Notes" were like instructional manuals: always at least 4 typed pages, stapled. Notes appeared in my jeans and jacket pockets, lunch box, and taped to some of the most random places all over the house. She wrote on whatever surface she could find: Post-Its, notepads, even napkins & paper towels. Some days she was sad, happy, proud, disappointed, worried sick, or just borderline insane.

In her defense, it's not easy to communicate with your children, and even more difficult to relate to them as teens. I guess sometimes a note breaks down those walls, making the words (and in my Mom's case - the raw emotions) flow easier.

How the blog started . . .

We had a house cat named Silky for over 14 years. My Mom got her as a kitten, from the gutter in the alley behind her friend's salon. The cat was a nuisance for most of her life and towards the end she completely lost her mind. She started puking and shitting all over the house, and when she puked on the carpet in the living room seconds after my Mom had it shampooed, I came home to this note below:

My Mother, her jaw dropped, hair all over the place, holding a bloody kitchen knife that she just used to decapitate our sad little kitty! This was both hysterical and completely deranged at the same time. But that was my Mom -- a regular suburban Dr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde. Obviously she didn't kill the cat, but I know she really wanted to that day. Silky has since passed on, but not by the hands of my Mother or her kitchen knife.

Fast forward about 15 years: this past summer I started digging through my collection of notes and after seeing that drawing again after so many years, I knew it was time for the world to see these notes. For a few weeks I struggled to decide which medium would do my Mother's words justice, and finally settled on a blog format. Twitter just didn't give me enough characters to truly capture my Mom's "character."

So the blog is set-up as follows: my Mom's words are the ones that look like they were written with a typewriter; my commentary follows in italics. There are some photos & scans of original notes, others are re-typed exactly as they appeared. I will be adding new notes as often as possible, and as the blog grows I will include text messages, emails, and even voicemail audio! I also encourage my readers to send in funny notes from their Mom via email, and if they're good (and clean) I will post them.

I hope you all enjoy the blog and thank you for reading!

. . .and thank you Mom, this one is for you!

- John
August 2009

Welcome to The Cat is Dead . . . Put Her Out for Garbage

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Don't throw away the Angel.

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