Say, This Is Amy Luedtke...

and I miss my mom, due to the fact that, she is dead.

That may sound a little harsh, but that sentence actually makes me laugh. It combines two of my mom's favorite sayings. Whenever she made a "business" call, mom always started it with "Say, This is Colleen Luedtke." My older sister, Jenn, and I used to love to listen in on these calls and giggle away while we imagined the person on the other end repeating, "This is Colleen Luedtke." We don't know how or why mom picked up this verbal quirk, but just thinking about it still makes me smile.

"Due to the fact that" was a favorite of Colleen's for written communication. Whenever I had missed school because I was sick (or pretending to be sick) the note my mom would write was a variation of "Amy missed school yesterday due to the fact that, she was ill." Again, thinking of that one little (yet mysterious and completely unnecessary phrase) captures so much of my mom's spirit.

On my mom's birthday (which was Monday, St. Patrick's Day), I had some aspirations of writing a blog post that would honor her and be a slightly profound reflection on life lessons learned. Or something like that. Something inspiring and poignant but not depressing. And while I certainly learned so much from my mom, I cannot put these things easily or quickly into words. I am already running on far too little sleep (and too much caffeine and alcohol) these days to stay up late working on another blog post. So maybe a more cohesive and thematic post can happen another day. For now, I just want to [Chad hijacking the post here...Amy is the amazing, funny and loving human being she is in large part because her mother was an amazing, funny and loving human being. I can think of little that could be a better tribute to my mother-in-law on the anniversary of her birth than the person Amy grew to be....we now return you to your regularly scheduled blog...] capture some of the little, unique things that I remember about my mom,  things that live on in my memory (rather accurately or not) and my heart and keep her spirit alive for me. Perhaps these little, seemingly inconsequential quirks are the things that are the most important and precious pieces of any of us?

Mom doing the hokey pokey at our wedding.

So, in no particular order:

• Mom was fanatical about doing laundry. She regularly ironed everything, including t-shirts. She was actually very talented at "ironing out" t-shirts so they ended up at least a size bigger than when she started. Mom insisted on doing Chad's laundry once we started dating. 
• "They can't take that away from you." That was one of my mom's favorite sayings. I wasn't always sure who "they" were or what they wanted to take, but at least once it was meant as encouragement for the artsy fartsy liberal arts B.A. degree I was getting. As in, "you may never get a job, but at least you will have your education!"
• Mom was not a good driver, but had no recognition of this. Her biggest troubles were driving too slowly (so it was very ironic when she got stopped for speeding) and just being flustered. One time when we made a field trip to the Cities to go to the Renaissance Fair, she accidentally turned her hazards on and drove around who knows how long with them on. It was actually a pretty good idea. 
• If mom sat down for more than 10 minutes she fell asleep. And she moaned in her sleep. This could make church or movies a little embarrassing. She never owned up to this, though, and would just say she was "resting her eyes." She actually started laughing in her sleep, to make it seem like she was awake and laughing about whatever television show we were watching. Again, this could be embarrassing at movies or church. 
• Mom was a great storyteller. Some of her best stories included the time when she was a house cleaner for a professor and vacuumed up a Hummel figurine; when one of her high school teachers died during class while screaming at the students and they had to walk over her body to exit the classroom; and many tales about her high school days in Milwaukee where the girls fought with hat pins and they sent my mom to special ed because she came from the country. They also sent most of the black kids to special ed, just because they were black, and they looked out for my mom and watched over her at pot parties. 
• Mom voraciously read romance novels and loved "Day of Our Lives."
• Mispronouncing words and names was an art form for my mom. I can't do her talent justice in print so perhaps I can do a stand up routine someday. (Ask me about "commune.")
• Mom put bread out at every family meal (just regular grocery store bread). I don't think anyone ever ate the bread, so Jenn and I started calling it our "bread centerpiece."
• Mom used to say sex only took 30 seconds. This wasn't meant to instill me with a "why bother?" philosophy, but to support her position that teens will find a place and a time to have sex if they are really motivated. I always wondered but never had the courage to ask if the 30 seconds included foreplay.