Uncle John’s Presents Mom’s Bathtub Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

“Dear Mama” by Tupac Shakur

  (album: Me Against the World, 1995)

  Your average gangsta rappers may not come off as the sentimental types, that’s fo’ shizzle, but get ‘em talking about their sainted mamas and they may start blubbering like 10-year-old boys. The disturbingly posthumously prolific Tupac Shakur is no exception. “Dear Mama” finds him representing for his mother, who raised him right even though he was a bad kid. It’s a sweet, yet tough, tribute to all his mama did for him: “Cause through the drama / I can always depend on my mama / And when it seems that I’m hopeless / You say the words that can get me back in focus.” Warm and sincere, Tupac’s thanks to his mama could make anyone shed a tear or two.

  “Mama, Come Home” by Ella Fitzgerald

  (album: The War Years, 1994)

  Whipsaw yourself back to the 1940s for this Ella Fitzgerald gem in which a little girl begs her mom to come home from jitterbugging at the local juke joint: “Papa’s been mending the holes in his socks / While you stick nickels in the jitterbug box!” Ella exclaims. They’ve even eaten all the crackers and cheese. But then Ella adds this note—seeing as dad likes to jitterbug too, mama should just drag the jukebox home with her. They’ll all still be hungry and have holes in their socks, but at least they’d be dancing as a family. And isn’t togetherness what family is all about?

  “Mama Liked the Roses” by Elvis Presley (album: From Nashville To Memphis: The Essential 60’s Masters I, 1993)

  Elvis Presley was the biggest mama’s boy in the entire known universe, and it’s a good thing too. If he hadn’t have stopped off at Sun Records to record a song for his mama as a gift, thence to be discovered, he might still be a trucker today and then all those Elvis imitators would have to have found something else to do with their lives. Hmmm. Anyway, you can see how Elvis would do this song, which talks about the roses Mama used to grow and how now they use those same roses to decorate Mama’s grave. It’s kind of schmaltzy—but, come on. You know Elvis’s mama, Gladys, would have loved it.

  “Stacy’s Mom” by Fountains of Wayne

  (album: Welcome Interstate Managers, 2003)

  The song’s main character is asking teen pal Stacy if he can come to her house after school. Does he have a thing for Stacy? Well, no, as the exuberantly poppy chorus explains: “Stacy’s mom has got it going on!” Yeah, way to make Stacy feel special there, pal. It’s a deeply silly song, but it’s also insanely catchy, down to the Cars-like guitar riffs. And it pretty accurately reflects what it was like to be a deliriously hormonal teenage boy fantasizing about a Mrs. Robinson experience from one of the local suburban divorcées. Advice to you potential Stacys out there: a good cold blast from the garden hose will get the boys back to reality.

  The True Story Behind Mother’s Day

  A daughter’s answer to her mother’s prayer creates Mother’s Day. Trouble is, the success of the holiday made her want to quash it.

  The American Mother’s Day had its origins after the Civil War, when Ann Maria Jarvis worked hard with other mothers to start Mother’s Friendship Day in an effort to bring together a community divided by the Civil War. Inspired by her mother’s work and words, Anna Jarvis lobbied for Mother’s Day to become a national holiday.

  MOTHER’S FRIENDSHIP DAY, THE ORIGINS

  The daughter of a minister, Ann Maria (1832–1905) gave birth to twelve children, but, sadly, only four survived to adulthood. She lived in West Virginia and was very active in her church. There she formed the Mother’s Day Work Clubs, where local moms could raise money for the poor.

  In 1861, Ann Maria and the Mother’s Day Work Clubs faced a terrible challenge. When the Civil War began, the inhabitants of West Virginia were deeply divided. Some West Virginians served the Confederacy while others stayed true to the Union. Determined that the political division wouldn’t end the Mother’s Day Work Clubs, Ann Maria and the other mothers declared themselves neutral, serving both Rebels and Yankees. Blue and Gray mothers worked together to nurse, clothe, and feed all the sick solders.

  When the war was over, Ann Maria set out to heal the civil wounds by initiating a Mother’s Friendship Day in the summer of 1865 for all the mothers and their families living in Taylor County, West Virginia. The occasion marked the reunion between Blue and Gray, and the event was an amazing success, as humble mothers and housewives were able to bring once-bitter enemies together. For several years after, Mother’s Friendship Day was an annual celebration. Ann Maria’s unexpected success inspired Julia Ward Howe and then her own daughter, Anna, to propose special mother’s days of their own.

  MOTHER’S DAY, THE BEGINNING

  It started innocently enough. Ann Maria’s daughter, Anna Jarvis (1864–1948) centered much of her life on the church where Ann Maria taught. The legend goes that Ann Maria gave a stirring talk on the mothers of the Bible and concluded with a prayer that someone would establish a day to commemorate mothers and their service to humanity. Twelve-year-old Anna committed that prayer to memory and silently vowed to fulfill it.

  After her mother died on May 9, 1905, Anna began serious work to answer Ann Maria’s prayer. Being the daughter of a dedicated activist, she knew how to get things done. By the second anniversary of her mother’s death Anna had convinced the minister of Andrews Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia, to hold a Mother’s Day memorial service. Anna passed out white carnations, her mother’s favorite flower—an act that would later come back to haunt her. Eventually those whose mothers had died wore white carnations, while those whose mothers were living wore pink or red carnations.

  MOTHER’S DAY, THE HOLIDAY

  Anna kept on fighting to make Mother’s Day an official holiday. With the help of some wealthy supporters, her efforts began to pay off by the third anniversary of her mother’s death. By May 10, 1908, the Mother’s Day Sunday service in Philadelphia brought out a crowd of more than 15,000! The idea really took off in the following year, and by 1909 forty-five states, plus the territories, Canada, and Mexico, observed the holiday.

  Congress finally woke up and smelled the flowers. They voted in 1913 to have government officials from the president on down wear carnations on Mother’s Day. By 1914, Woodrow Wilson proclaimed it an official holiday.

  MOTHER’S DAY GOES COMMERCIAL

  Anna wanted Mother’s Day “to brighten the lives of good mothers. To have them know we (their children) appreciate them, though we do not show it as often as we ought.” What Anna didn’t appreciate were the commercial interests that looked at moms and began to see dollar signs. She opposed the sale of Mother’s Day cards, “A printed card . . . means nothing except you’re too lazy to write.” She opposed candy sales too, since she thought that adult children brought a box of candy to mother, then ate most of it themselves! But it was the florists who made her blood boil. They had turned Mother’s Day into a day to purchase flowers. “I wanted it to be a day of sentiment, not profit,” Anna said.

  She tried urging practical gifts like new eyeglasses or comfortable shoes. When that failed, she worked to get rid of the darned day altogether. But this time, letters and lob-bying didn’t work. In 1923, her lawsuits to stop Mother’s Day celebrations in New York failed and her protests even landed her in jail. In the 1930s, perhaps a little unbalanced from the long battle, Anna was removed by police after she disrupted a sale of carnations . . . by the American War Mothers.

  MOTHER’S DAY, THE LEGACY

  Despite Anna’s best efforts, she could not undo her work, nor the work of greeting card manufacturers. Mother’s Day lived on and thrived. Nations across the globe now formally honor mothers with their own special day. But we wonder, in answering her mother’s prayer, did Anna create a monster? We don’t think so. Even though commercialism can run amok, the sentiment of the holiday does shine through. Grateful women fondly remembered Anna as the mother of Mother’s Day and sent her cards for years. Oh, the irony.

  “Mother’s Day is in honor of the best Mother who ever lived—the Mother of your heart.”


  —Anna Jarvis

  “Time is the only comforter for the loss of a mother.”

  —Jane Welsh Carlyle

  Great Mama Ape!

  Binti Jua shows some maternal moxie!

  Mom saves a little boy from ferocious gorillas! Showing a calm intelligence when everyone around her had panicked, a brave mother (with her own baby still clinging to her) saved a three-year-old toddler who’d fallen approximately 20 feet to the floor of the gorilla enclosure at Illinois’s Brookfield Zoo. The catch? The heroic mom was one of the gorillas.

  SAVED BY THE MOM

  On August 16, 1996, at the Brookfield Zoo’s Primate World exhibit, a rambunctious toddler climbed the stone-and-bamboo barrier and then fell to the floor of the gorilla compound. The horrified crowd panicked and the boy’s mother screamed, “The gorilla’s got my baby!” A female gorilla, Binti-Jua (whose name means “Daughter of Sunshine” in Swahili) was the first to act. Carrying her own baby, Koola, on her back, she approached the unconscious boy and picked him up.

  Gorillas are five and a half feet tall when they stand straight up on their hind legs and can weigh from 200 to 600 pounds. Their fierce reputation is undeserved, but even the zookeepers who were familiar with the gentleness of giant apes were worried. The helpless child was suddenly under the control of a wild animal.

  Binti-Jua cradled the child in her arms and rocked him gently. She seemed to hesitate as to where best to take the little boy; then, keeping other gorillas away, she crossed the compound and placed him near the door where the zookeepers usually entered. She placed the child gently down in a place where waiting staff and paramedics could easily take over. Then, as a stunned crowd watched, the rescuer casually returned to her comfortable spot and began to groom her own baby. The little boy spent a few days in the hospital and was released as good as new.

  MOTHER OF ALL CONTROVERSY

  Binti-Jua’s actions hit the headlines. Celebrated for her amazing rescue, she also became the focus of controversy. Dr. Morris Goodman, a molecular phylogeneticist and the man who discovered the small genetic differences in the coding between human and gorilla DNA, believed that Binti-Jua had some sort of thought process similar to a human’s regarding the safety of the child. She had recognized the toddler as vulnerable and displayed intelligent behavior by moving him to safety. Others praised her ability to cope intelligently in a new and unexpected situation.

  Skeptics argued that Binti-Jua was only trying to win the approval of her keepers and avoid punishment by retrieving something for them. They pointed out that Binti had been reared by humans, and when she became pregnant, the zoo staff gave her mothering lessons. This led some researchers to argue that Binti-Jua acted more like a human mom because she’d been raised and learned parenting skills from human keepers.

  THANKS, MOM!

  Witnesses, however, claimed that regardless of what did or did not go on in her brain, Binti treated the boy with as much gentleness and care as if she’d been his own mother. And as the rescued toddler recovered from his injuries, Binti was praised as a genuine heroine. Letters and gifts (including pounds of bananas) poured in from all over the world. The heroine received a medal from the American Legion, an honorary membership in a Downey, California, PTA, and a spot as one of the 25 most intriguing “people” in People magazine.

  Did You Know?

  Largest Dog Litter: 23 Puppies

  The record is held by three different dogs: an American Foxhound in 1944, a Saint Bernard in 1975, and a Great Dane in 1987. All had 23-puppy pregnancies.

  Largest Rabbit Litter: 24 Baby Bunnies

  Two separate New Zealand rabbits mums each gave birth to a litter of 24 kits: one mama in 1978 and the other in 1999.

  Largest Bird Egg: 5 pounds, 2 ounces

  In June of 1997, a big mama ostrich laid a very big egg in Datong, Shanxi, China.

  The Dalai Lama’s Mama

  From an overworked peasant wife to the mother of a god-king and the heroine of a country in exile, Diki Tsering rose to the challenges of an amazing life.

  What if you were a religious, hard-toiling peasant mother who suddenly learned that your two-year-old toddler was the incarnation of a god? Not only that, but he was preordained to become the leader of a nation? It’s an event that seems impossible, almost beyond imagining, but it was exactly what happened to Diki Tsering, the mother of Tibet’s Dalai Lama.

  Born in the year of the ox, her grandfather gave her the name Sonam Tsomo, after the goddess of fertility and longevity. Sonam was a peasant girl from the northeastern edge of Tibet. Though she had many chores and was never formally educated, she was quite happy growing up on her parents’ large farm. She wanted to stay there, close to her family, but Tibetan customs were rigid—a daughter must marry and serve her husband’s family in his household. At the age of 16, Sonam left home a reluctant bride.

  CINDERELLA STORY

  Her new in-laws wanted a daughter-in-law to help them in their old age. The 16-year-old was put to work at home and in the fields. Like Cinderella, Sonam was expected to be on the job 24–7. She fetched water, swept the floors, fed and milked the animals, collected fuel for the fires, made the meals, and tended crops. Despite the harshness, the bride accepted her life, believing as a devout Buddhist that suffering would ennoble her character and make her a better human being.

  A few years after her marriage, Sonam’s in-laws died. She helped her husband manage the farm and she was also responsible for running the household as well as caring for her children. But some things didn’t change: she was still working ‘round the clock, and when she had a child she simply tied the baby on her back and returned to her chores. In fact, Sonam was hard at work shoveling snow when she had an important visit from government officials. They told her that, like Cinderella, her drudgery was over and that she would live in a palace; she’d even have a new name, Diki Tsering, which means “ocean of luck.” The enormous change in this mother’s life was all because of her two-year-old toddler, Llhamo Dhondup.

  A CHILD’S DESTINY

  The strangers, who arrived at Diki Tsering’s door in 1937, had been led there by dreams, divination, and oracles. They were an official search party scouring the country for the reincarnation of the late thirteenth Dalai Lama. The title “Dalai Lama” means “teacher of wisdom as vast as the ocean,” and he’s considered a god-king, Avalo-kitesvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, spiritual and political leader of Tibet. Each new Dalai Lama is believed to be a reincarnation of the previous one. When little Llhamo Dhondup passed the search party’s official tests (like being able to identify possessions of the thirteenth Dalai Lama), the toddler was recognized as the fourteenth Dalai Lama. And his mom became Amala, the great mother of the nation.

  Overwhelmed and more than a little frightened by the fate of her family, the peasant mother set off for the palace in the forbidden city of Lhasa. Later in her autobiography she wrote, “Ever since I went to live in Lhasa, I tried to become Diki Tsering, with all the social forms and graces that go with that name.” But it wasn’t easy to take the unspoiled peasant girl out of the new Amala, which turned out to be a darned good thing.

  CINDERELLA MISSES HOME

  Diki Tsering lived in the palace where she was treated like a queen—but she soon longed for her hard life on the farm. She disliked being idle while servants did all the work. She valued simple honesty and hated the devious court intrigues for power. She missed her son, as his Holiness had to live with the monks in a monastery.

  And oh, those impractical royal fashions! Government officials gave Diki Tsering garments laden with pearls and coral. Scorning the heavy gowns, she wore her comfortable, peasant hari, a simple embroidered overdress. Haute couture was definitely not her style.

  While Diki Tsering adjusted to a queenly lifestyle, danger swirled around her. The young Dalai Lama was a regent and the men that ruled in his stead were constantly fighting. One of those ruling officials even assassinated the regent’s father. Feeling
alone and helpless without her husband, the Amala soon had to help her son face a new threat from Communist China, which was imprisoning and killing Tibet’s religious leaders.

  NO FAIRY-TALE ENDINGS

  By 1950, the Chinese forced the Dalai Lama and his family to flee to India, where they set up a government in exile. In India, the Amala spent the rest of her life helping Tibetan refugees and fostering Tibetan traditions, keeping them alive despite the destructive efforts of the Chinese. The exiled Tibetans grew to love and revere her. The Dalai Lama praised his mother’s calm kindness and credited her with helping the royal family to be compassionate while never forgetting their humble origins.

  Infighting, death, warfare, and exile: it wasn’t exactly a fairy-tale ending to her Cinderella story, but the Amala coped just as she had when she was a peasant bride. Diki Tsering thought of herself as an ordinary wife and mother, but those who experienced her compassion or were inspired by her humility and strength of character—they considered her extraordinary.

  “The reason why mothers are more devoted to their children than fathers: it is that they suffer more in giving them birth and are more certain that they are their own.” —Aristotle

  “All mothers are working mothers.” —Unknown

  Ladies’ Man, Mama’s Boy?

  Good guys got a good thing goin’ with mom.