I tell stories; it’s what I do — run my mouth or type fast as I can. Sometimes I embellish them a little bit just for flavor, but this one retelling needs no other elements than God’s honest truth. I almost died in a fiery car crash yesterday. You read that last part right. After spending the last three years and change separated from my precious little Mama and even longer separated from other beloved friends and family I almost rejoined them on the other side right near mile marker 22 on I-385 northbound.

Yesterday was Tuesday so as per schedule I was on my way home from visiting Granny at the nursing home in Clinton. It was a completely normal day. I was a little bummed that Granny hadn’t wanted to interact with me after her initial toothless grin of recognition, but she takes spells like that. I may go down next week and find her chattering away in her baby talk and we’ll have a conversation of sorts for an hour.

Anyway, back to the near death experience. I was clipping along in my ’03 Honda Element aka. “The Brave Little Toaster” with the A/C on max, listening to my tunes cranked up loud on my iPod, and just generally enjoying the bright sunshine. I had a semi truck in front of me, a big Ford truck behind me, and generally modest traffic scattered about here and there. All was moderately well with the world for a moment.

I should have known it wouldn’t last.

Just as I crossed the bridge at the WalMart Distribution Center where State 221 and I-385 cross, I felt a tickle on my right foot — my accelerator foot. I reached over with my left foot and scratched said tickle, but the tickle didn’t go away. Instead, the tickle transferred to the left foot around the front of my ankle. I was curious so I looked down; looking back at me was a spider somewhere between the size of my thumbnail and a dinner plate and it was taking a leisurely eight legged stroll up my left leg towards the open gap in my shorts.

One would not be remiss in saying I was somewhat troubled and chagrined by this completely unexpected situation. One would ALSO not be remiss in saying I momentarily but completely lost my @#$%ing $#%&. As far as I could determine, a Goliath Bird-Eating Tarantula had miraculously teleported from the jungles of South America to about eight inches below my left knee. Perhaps it was instead a deadly Southeastern Brown Recluse with the lethal white violin shape prominently on its back. Forgive me if I not only couldn’t be sure of the species of arachnid approaching an opening in my shorts, but I also DID NOT CARE in the moment.

All I knew for certain was a @#$%ing spider was crawling up my leg. Comparative Arachnology wasn’t in my stream of consciousness.

Now thankfully, in the midst of such adrenaline fueled situations, the brain really shows its true worth . . .  not so much the frontal lobe, that’s pretty much shut down at the moment, but the instinctual parts of our grey matter which remember the times long ago when humans were just another item on the menu. That part of my brain took over and made me realize immediately I was in serious trouble. I could neither put on brakes nor let off the gas and use my right foot to remove the eight legged freak from my left shin. Had I slowed down so abruptly, the truck behind me would have run me over like Gravedigger at a Monster Truck Jam.

As it was, I started violently pounding my leg against the floorboard in hopes of dislodging the intruder. This caused me to swerve off the road at highway speed. I know I swerved off the road because the newly installed rumble strips made my teeth chatter. I jerked the wheel back to the left and almost overcorrected right into the Jane Mansfield Bar of the semi truck in front of me. The whole time, I’m doing a one legged cross between a Mexican Hat Dance and a Russian Sword Dance while thousands of cars and trucks around me are helping me concentrate by laying down on their horns.

Now let me pause here to address a question which has come up both times I told this story yesterday: “Why didn’t you just pull over and stop?”

Actually, that would have been an excellent idea but you must remember at the time I was mostly using the Og and Thag parts of my brain and cavemen don’t have really good grasps of the mechanics of driving a car; they are, however, excellent at the realization a @#$%ing spider was crawling up my leg. One must make due with the resources one has at the time and higher order thinking skills were up on a chair in the frontal lobe screaming like little girls.

Now, somehow, and I have no idea of the exact mechanism, all my gyrations managed to dislodge the a @#$%ing spider from my leg. That was the good news. The bad news was I knew neither where it fell nor what it’s immediate plans were. All I knew for certain was A) a @#$%ing spider was no longer crawling up my leg and B) I almost ate up the back end of a semi truck.

In the next thirty seconds or so, I started to breath a little normally. The frontal lobe came back online enough to get me moved to the back of the pack of traffic so I was no longer in immediate danger of causing a Talladega backstretch style of pileup on the highway. It is lucky that I did so because about thirty more seconds later, I felt that tell-tale tickle on my right leg again. This time though, I was prepared. I glanced down and flicked mini-Rodan off my leg with my left foot and he landed right next to that left foot as I put it down.

Now ladies and gentlemen, I am not a violent man. I love all God’s creatures except cockroaches, mosquitoes, and UGA football fans. I bear no real malice towards creepy crawlies like snakes and spiders. I feel in my heart everything on earth is just trying to get by as best as it can. Unfortunately for the spider now next to my left foot on the floorboard of the car, those gentle thoughts are the province of that pesky frontal lobe and not all of it had made it off the stool and stopped screaming like a little girl. Og and Thag were still pretty much running the show. As a result, I did not hesitate to stomp on that spider like he had said something offensive about my mother.

I wiggled my foot around. I stomped three or four more times. I’d just seen a glimpse of the tunnel of light, my life had flashed before my eyes; therefore I was taking no chances. I turned that poor spider into spider mush and proceeded to drive on home still shaking a little bit. I pulled into the safety of my driveway and turned off the car. Then I grabbed a wad of napkins from the center console because, after all, the spider had been a valiant foe and deserved to be properly disposed of in the trash can . . . plus I didn’t want a zombie spider loose in my car.

As I bent down to collect the remains, I got a whiff of a terrible smell. It seemed to be coming from the spider carcass. I wiped him up and brought him up to eye level to examine him more closely. I can tell you with absolute certainty had he so much as twitched, I would not be writing this post as my heart had borne all it could in one day so I’m certain I would have passed out and split my head open on a rock and died there in the driveway.

Luckily, that didn’t happen. Instead, I examined the spider remains. It wasn’t a wolf spider or a black widow. In fact, it turned out to not be a spider at all. It was instead a rather large example of the stink bugs which have taken over South Carolina the last few years.

That would’ve been nice to know thirty miles earlier!

Love y’all and keep those feet clean.

I have a friend who was single for many years after all of her friends and most of her acquaintances had married. This young lady HATED Valentine’s Day with a purple passion. She called it “Universal Single Awareness Day.” She said the whole world spent weeks reminding her of her lack of a significant other and then rubbed it in her face every February 14th. I’ve since lost touch with her so I don’t know how her quest for couplehood ever turned out, but she was extremely bitter and bitterness isn’t conducive to great relationship success so I have no trouble believing she now has 20+ cats in a small bungalow somewhere.

Still, I understand her a lot better these days . . . especially today. It’s my third Mother’s Day without Mama and so far time has done a crappy job of healing this wound. It doesn’t help that Mama LOVED Mother’s Day. I always managed to get her a card with my own money every year until I started truly earning my own money and then I took Mother’s Day to the next level. I’d call her at the crack of dawn, take her to Waffle House to eat breakfast, give her her card, go to church with her, and take her to supper later on.

Getting married changed nothing because Budge was the daughter Mama always wanted. She doted on Mama every Mother’s Day as much or more than even I did. She would always arrange a mani/pedi for them . . . until Mama’s lungs couldn’t handle the harsh solvent odor in the store. Mama went from one card to three: one from me, one from Budge, and one from “both of us.” She kept every single card.

I know she kept every single card because I found them neatly arranged in chronological order in one of her deepest dresser drawers three years ago when I had to go through her stuff. She kept everything from the scrawling childish folded notebook paper and crayon all the way through the best Hallmark had to offer. I read two before I realized I’d probably lose my mind if I tried to get through any more so I pulled out the drawer and unceremoniously dumped almost forty years of love writ large into a large trash bag.

Now, every year, Mother’s Day is everywhere starting as soon as Easter ends. Every store runs specials. Every florist vies for the most beautiful commercial so we’ll buy their arrangements. Churches have special recognition services. Everywhere everyone is reminding me I no longer have a mother.

It’s crushing on Budge as well though she does a much better job of dealing with it than I do. In many ways it’s worse on her. She lost her own mother at fifteen and then had to endure losing the woman she called the greatest mother-in-law God ever created, but Budge has a special ache because we are barren. I have to deal with not having Mama. She has to deal with not having Mama AND not having children to celebrate her on this special day. I try to fill the gap, but she sees it for the weak attempt it is. Having no mother and no children I think are two of the hardest struggles my precious Budge has to endure.

We don’t go to the cemetery and visit graves though. My stepdad and I keep some sort of flower on Mama’s grave, but it’s a far cry from the huge arrangements others have on their departed loved ones’ headstones. I used to ache and agonize over not being able to afford an arrangement like those. I thought it meant I was a sub-standard son, but then I realized a lot of those flowers were making up for flowers never given in life. One of Mama’s favorite songs was “Give Me the Roses While I Live.” That’s what I tried to do, give her love and flowers while she was here to see and enjoy them.

Oh, and please, please, please to all my well-meaning Christian friends, don’t tell me my Mama is in a better place. It will make me want to hit y0u with a large blunt object for a few reasons. One, I know perfectly well Mama is in Heaven (at least on the days I’m not in a black hole questioning if any afterlife exists); two, I don’t want her in Heaven; I want her HERE hugging me so I can hug her back, so I can smell her and touch her and tickle her until she lost her breath; and three, I’ll never have a mother again because when we all get to Heaven our earthly relationships won’t be in effect anymore and we’ll be together, but she won’t be my little Mommy and I won’t be her Little Man ever again.

So keep the well-meant platitudes and bible verses behind your teeth today; they are cold, cold comfort compared to my Mama’s arms. I know that sounds horrible and I apologize but instead of the passing time making things easier . . . well, it’s just made it that much harder. I’m fighting a war in my heart and mind against becoming bitter about Mama’s death and, unfortunately, I seem to be losing. I guess it would be easier if she hadn’t died so young, hadn’t sacrificed so much for me, and hadn’t generally been the greatest Mama the world ever knew. I still love her fiercely and painfully.

Hug your mothers if you still have them and know you have my full sympathy if you don’t. Happy Mother’s Day to all the Mamas out there. I hope you get the love and attention you deserve today and every day as well.

Love y’all, and keep those feet clean.