Murder by Death

Tasks for Mōdraniht: Tell us your favourite memory about your mom, grandma, or the woman who had the greatest impact on your childhood.

My favourite memory of my mom is one that's likely going to shock someone who reads this, so oddly enough I'm going to include a trigger warning for ::snort:: violence against children.  Afterward, I'm going to tell two other short anecdotes so that everyone can rest assured that my childhood really was amazing.

My absolute favourite memory of my mom is when she and I were in a pitched battle about something, who knows what.   I was a pre-teen girl; everything involved a pitched battle.  Anyway, she made me so incandescently angry (and I was giving as good as I got) about whateveritwas, that I needed to lash out badly.  So I gave her a huge raspberry.  

And she smacked me in the face.

Now, the reason I went with the raspberry in the first place was because I knew I was close to pushing her over the edge, and I figured the raspberry was the safe bet.  So I was, to say the least, indignant over getting slapped*:  

Me: What did you do THAT for?!?

Mom: You KNOW why!

Me: No, I really don't!

Mom: ::sputter::..Because you went

!!!

At which point we both burst into hysterical laughter.  Because really, where else do you go from a raspberry battle??  That memory still makes me laugh every time it comes to mind.

* For those still appalled, my mom was short (5 foot) and I was at leat 5'6" by this point; and her upper body strength was...lacking.  In other words, she didn't pack a lot of sting in her slap.  She was quick though, man... like greased lightning.

Now for the more Hallmark Card-like memory:  my mom owned a flower and gift shop until I was about 30, and she worked 6 days a week, Monday-Saturday.  But in Florida in the summer, anyone with brains and a second house up north leaves, and our town was usually a tumbleweed short of being an actual ghost town between May and September.  So every Wednesday in the summer, mom would close up the shop at noon and she and I would pack up and head to the beach - which we always had entirely to ourselves, because what sane person goes to a beach in Florida in July and August??  I'd go straight into the water and she'd start combing the shoreline: she'd be looking for shells, and I'd be masked up and looking for sharks teeth and sand dollars. We'd stay until the sun started to set. 

6 or 7 hours later (and no sunscreen; my tan had a tan), we'd pack up and go get ice cream cones.  This was a HUGE deal for me because it's the only time I got ice cream (no sugar household), so it was almost as big a treat as the beach.  If she was feeling weak-willed on the day, I'd even get one of those chocolate shells poured over the top.  :)

And finally - my favorite memory about my grandma, one that won't surprise anyone if they've read the paragraph above.  A few times a year, I'd go and spend a week at grandma's house, and my grandma always bought Cool Whip (think sweetened whipped cream, but without actually being made of cream or any other dairy product.  Now stop thinking; no good can come from it.  Suffice it to say it was sweet and fluffy and -hopefully- non-carcinogenic. It came in a tub.)  Cool Whip was serious contraband ... it was everything short of bubble gum that my mom hated.  And my grandma would let me eat it straight out of the tub with a spoon.  And honestly, I'm pretty sure the spoon was optional.