EDMONTON — You could tell how much I loved my mom just by looking at what I wore on the first day of Grade 3.

I was the new kid at St. Martin’s Elementary in Vegreville. My mom, stepdad and I had moved to the town east of Edmonton so my stepdad could take a job there.

The timing of the move was awful. It was May — one month left in the school year — and I had the tricky task of trying to fit in with a class full of country kids who had the whole year to bond.

I showed up for my first day dressed all in white — white shirt, white shoes, white pants even — like some mobster’s son. I even wore the gold ring my mom had bought me.

“The white outfit made you look mysterious. You didn’t look like you were a local. Maybe from Calgary or something,” my friend Amy recalls. “I thought you looked rich. And at a young age my mom taught me to marry up.”

My mom gets a little annoyed when I make fun of the way she dressed me. I know she thought I looked cute, like her little doll. The fact is I was her only child and I suppose she wanted me to feel special.

And the ring? Well, she says I was the one who wanted it. “You didn’t refuse. And you were always playing with my rings,” she says. “When you were three or four, you were wearing my jewelry all the time.”

I love my mom. And coupled with that line about the jewelry, I don’t blame you if you think I’m a mama’s boy.

I suppose in a way I am.

As a society that devotes a day of appreciation to mothers, we sure don’t take kindly to men who openly express it. Love for one’s mother is often perceived as weakness. The term “mama’s boy” in particular is profoundly negative. To be called a mama’s boy is to insinuate an unhealthy, almost Oedipal closeness to one’s mom.

The term has persisted for generations. Its use can be traced back to the mid-1800s, always a pejorative, and it continues to crop up in all sorts of places. Seminal punk band the Ramones led off their 1984 album Too Tough to Die with a song called Mama’s Boy. Urbandictionary.com, ever a reliable source on slang, says a mama’s boy is: “some loser who takes orders from his mom constantly like a little bitch.”

Other definitions, with far more unfriendly language, suggest that a mama’s boy is someone who puts his mother before his girlfriends or still lives with his mom well into adulthood.

It seems like the only time it’s acceptable for a man to express a closeness with his mother is when he has earned enough power or respect to prove that loving his mom wasn’t an impediment.

Canada’s longest-serving prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King famously sought political advice from his long-dead mother, while boastful rapper Kanye West owed everything to his mom Donda — and let us all know it. Kanye wrote a song called Hey Mama on his sophomore album that included lines like: “Can’t you see, you’re like a book of poetry. Maya Angelou, Nicky Giovanni, turn one page and there’s my mommy.” No one shoved him into a locker when he recorded that.

I suppose I’m just like Kanye — in every way — but especially because we were both raised by divorced parents.

There’s something about being the only child of a divorced psychologist and psychiatric nurse that makes you appreciate your parents for the complex, flawed people they are. Over the years, I’ve accumulated a small, colourful roster of second-series parental figures. Some, like my stepmom, taught me valuable life lessons, like the importance of a clean house and keeping my dad in line. Others, like the former stepdad who had a hand in raising me all through school, taught me how to stick up for myself. My mom loved him. I didn’t. But I pretended for her sake.

She was with my stepdad for more than 10 years and to this day I don’t understand why. Through their relationship, she taught me how people can make bad decisions, and how it is possible to move past these bad decisions and be better for it.

My stepdad ran his house like a prison. I was forbidden in my teenage years from answering the phone when he was home. He wanted control.

This was at odds with my mom’s parenting style. She was, by all accounts, liberal in her methods.

Every childhood dream I had, no matter how ridiculous and fleeting, she indulged. When I decided one week to be a drummer, she bought me a drum set. When I dropped the drums thinking I’d be cooler on guitar, she bought me a guitar. When I took three guitar lessons and quit, she was fine with it.

I also distinctly remember taking a shot of sambuca with the fiercely Ukrainian side of our family at Easter long before I’d hit puberty.

And when I drew a naked lady on a chalkboard at daycare and the director called in my mom to show her what I’d done, my mom got mad at her and said she was stifling my natural curiosity.

But my mom was also strict about the most annoying things. If I wanted to see an R-rated movie, it had to be at a friend’s house without her knowledge.

She also refused to buy me video games, a hard reality when Mario was my generation’s John Lennon.

“I felt video games took away from human interaction,” she says. “You’d go glazey, all starry eyed and I couldn’t even talk to you.”

Now that I’m grown, I actually collect video games — I’ve got 14 consoles. My mom and I live in different provinces. I don’t call her nearly as much as I should.

But I’m proud of her and appreciate everything she’s done for me.

This summer she’s getting married for the third time. I like this one. He treats her well and knows when to let her win — in life, if not at cards.

I suspect she’s even started picking out some of his clothes, too. Actually, he’d probably look great in an all-white suit.

bgelinas@edmontonjournal.com

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