MBS and I are on a serious roll with the Family Pictures Podcast as we drop episode 3: “The Roles We Play – Mr. Mom.” What I’m finding as we continue to focus on movies from 1983 is how the process is bringing up some memories and stories from my childhood as a kid in the 70s and 80s. Stories are gold and more than a few are starting to percolate that are really fun to relate, like family free-for-alls in the supermarket or early mishaps as a paperboy.
Another story I forgot to tell was around my own mom’s return to work, much like Teri Garr’s character in Mr. Mom. The economic crunch of the early 80s was real, add to that a divorce with seven kids and my mom had no choice but to suit back up. More than that though, she liked going back to work, she was good at what she did and it gave her reprieve from nearly 20 years of constant child rearing—almost entirely alone. The other side of having seven kids—if you can last long enough—is the older kids eventually take care of the younger. In many ways my oldest sister Kissy (she was maybe 16 or 17) was a surrogate mother to me and my younger sister. That said, your mom is your mom and it wasn’t easy for Cathy, the youngest, who was maybe six or seven at the time. She committed my mom’s work phone to memory* and spent much of the day calling her at work—making up all kinds of crazy emergency scenarios to ensure the operator and/or her colleagues would put her on the phone. She called so many times a day (an hour?) that the hospital ultimately had to block our home number (I wanna think at my mom’s request). My mom would check in at regular times, but we couldn’t call her. There’s a whole bit about how central the home phone was to a household in the 80s, but maybe we’ll do that in a different episode.
Anyway, I’m loving how this podcast provides the excuse to reflect back on my own childhood and family while thinking through my role as dad 40 years later. I always enjoy Alan Levine’s reflections on his family and using his blog to pay tribute, but I always had a hard time imagining a post like that head-on. The podcast allows me a way to do it slant while talking about my favorite entertainment in the world: movies.
Speaking of which, episode 4 will have us leaving the comfortable confines of 1983 and venturing up a year to discuss the cult classic Night of the Comet as a family film—“a bit of a stretch?” you ask. We don’t think so, but you are just gonna have to listen to find out about this early date film for a 13 year old bava.
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*In fact, I might put too much of this on my younger sister, we all called my mom a lot—although Cathy was the worst offender for sure. In fact, I still remember the hospital phone number: 379-0007.
Holy BLEEP, I had no clue your single mom “groomed” 7 kids.
I might not have caught this connection if not for Kate in mastodon, but also the accompanying meta story as a blogpost. I loathe those sites with an interesting title but then make me watch a whole video (nothing against you and MBS, I’m sure these are rollicking, gotta line up a way to get these in my podcast app).
Not as many siblings but I remember that shift when I was a kid and Mom went to work, where bratty me was left to the supervision of my older sisters. There was the family legend of The Grilled Cheese Incident. But also recalling one time I called Mom at work in tears because I got a splinter and could not extract it. She had to drive home and she plucked it out in 15 seconds.
I was a big effing baby!
But that’s the thing about stories that Fake Intelligence technology will never accomplish, linking lived experiences.
Ok I will start listening to you two movie freaks.
Hi Alan,
Thanks for the comment, they’re warmer than gold when you’re old. Yeah, my mom was a bit of a badass. She also nursed Truman Capote during that time when he was battling with his alcoholism during his final years. That is yet another story to tell 🙂
I definitely understand that roughly an hour of anyone’s time is a huge ask, which is why I have stuck to writing on the blog—it takes me hours to write what folks can scan in seconds. With media like a podcast, it’s kinda like ds106radio, I just assume no one is listening. But what I’ve found by committing with MBS to a themed podcast is that it brings out a whole different part of my life that I would love to blog (which was the nod to you for doing it so well).
I had a huge family and even more stories. My kids eat them up, what’s more I love telling them. So the podcast offers me a different kind of outlet, and on top of that I can always kind stories to fill-out the blog post given that’s still where I live, not to mention the time of the podcast goes so fast there are always anecdotes and stories that get left out.
Anyway, I certainly don’t expect anyone to listen to this show, but I do recommend folks to create a podcast of there own with someone as awesome as MBS cause it’s been a total blast.
Also, we will have a audio-only, RSS-driven feed of the episodes here soon (if not already).