Daughter's tribute.

The plans for this evening have been in the works for so long, and there have been so many e-mails back and forth about the preparations, when I spoke to Joyce yesterday, she said to me, “I’ll see you at the Coronation.” And when I asked Michael whether he’d be driving the motorcade, he said, “No I’m handling security.” So mom, tonight you are truly Queen for a Day, and it’s my great pleasure to be amongst those who vie to offer you tributes and throw garlands at your feet.

Let me begin by telling you a story. Some years ago, mom came to me with a copy of her living will. She said, “Ellen, I want you to have a copy of this. If I get sick, I don’t want to live hooked up to a machine. And I don’t want you kids to have to deal with that. I’m giving you the authority to pull the plug.” “Mom, I said, “You have three kids. Why do I have to pull the plug?” “Because Karen will get too emotional,” she said. “And Jane will forget.”

I’ve always loved that story because of what it says about my mom: that she has no interest in living if she can’t do it flat out.

I think I first recognized my mom’s uniqueness when I was a kid, and all my friends kept telling me how great she was. ‘Your mother is so fabulous’, they’d say whenever they came over, which was often, because ours was the home where everybody wanted to hang out.

As a kid, I also knew that I had the prettiest mom. Other kids had ordinary moms to watch over them. I had June Allyson.

Well, to be more accurate, June Allyson if she’d played poker. Poker games are usually thought of as a male ritual, but my mother had a monthly poker night with the girls. Whenever all the ladies came to our place, I’d sneak into the kitchen to steal leftover party sandwiches, and see the money and cards and chips scattered across the dining room table, and smell the room heavy with cigarette smoke, and I’d always think how cool it was that my mom was a card shark. Even then, I think I intuited that she was a woman with an identity all her own, separate from that of a wife or mother, and I loved that idea of her.

She was always the best baker, too. Indeed, so many of my childhood memories of my mother focus on her standing in the kitchen baking, and of coming home to a house redolent with lovely aromas. To my daughter’s generation, this idyll of the classic ‘50s aproned mom has become a kind of retro fantasy, but to me it will always be a symbol of the childhood I remember.

But the ‘50s homemaker Mom was just one side of the story. For my mother is a multi-faceted woman. She worked in retail for many years, and because of her love for people, was successful at it. My mother is the most social person I know. Wherever I go, people are always asking about her. A couple of weeks ago, the podiatrist asked about her. “Your mom loves life,” he told me. “She’s so much fun. We have a ball whenever she comes in.” And I’m thinking, who else has a ball at the podiatrist’s office? How many kids run into their mothers’ fans?

I first began to realize that my mother was remarkable when I got to that stage where girls sit around and complain about their mothers. In those discussions, I was always something of an outcast, because I never had any good material to offer. My friends railed on about mothers who bossed them around and expected them to follow a certain path, but my mother believed in raising independent daughters. What I didn’t realize then is that a ‘50s mother who raised daughters to take care of themselves in the world was a woman ahead of her time.

Another image I have of my mother is that of the glamourous woman. Her elegance and joie de vivre make her the life of any party, and nowhere was that spirit more evident, recently, than when she showed up at a costume party dressed like a Playboy bunny.

The men, of course, were blown away—and not just the ones her age. I watched them all madly flirting with her. But then again, what man—at any age—wouldn’t be utterly charmed by such sexy confidence? Still, it was the women’s reactions that interested me most, for they were clearly admiring of my mother's moxie. There she was decked out in fishnets and bunny ears, attitude to burn, saying, ‘Screw the rules. Be who you are. Love life. Have fun. Don’t become invisible just because you’re aging. Wear fishnet stockings and put cotton balls on your ass!’ I felt as I have so often felt over the years when others first meet my mom and fall hopelessly in love with her. I want to boast, 'That’s my mom. Aren’t I lucky? Isn’t she a trip?'

That’s the woman I have the good fortune to call my mom—the one who’s out there on the dance floor, dancing until the band retires, refusing to be cowed by all of life’s hardships, looking forward, not back, indomitable of spirit, game for anything, fiercely, ferociously alive.

She was always there, of course: whenever I started a new phase of my life, unpacking boxes, putting away dishes, and pitching in; when I was a single parent in need of emergency babysitting. She has been there, unfailingly, and without judgment, whenever I needed to vent or cry or just let her wise words wash over me. She has never let me down, never once, and if I have my way, she will continue to be there, blazing through life in her Ford Topaz for years to come. Mom, what else is there to say except that I love you?