Feb. 24 - Virago in Posso's Prompts

Virago (n:) a domineering, violent, or bad-tempered woman; : a woman of great stature, strength, and courage

I had to look into the actual definition of this word as I was confused as to whether it was to denote positive or negative qualities for a woman and as I was delving further into the subject, there was one woman that continuously crossed my mind: my mother.

With my dad being disabled, my mom was the breadwinner of our family. My mother has been a nurse in some form for over 35 years, whether it be on call in an ICU, taking care of recovering accidents (my dad,) or the position she’s held for almost fifteen years now as the head of home care and hospice in my hometown city’s hospital. Nursing has been the only thing my mom has done with her career. Having 4 sons, the concept of taking care of people definitely boiled over into her personal life too. There were many times I felt guilty that my mom was surrounded by so much testosterone. She loved reading Cosmo and going out with friends for spa days but those were few and far between. When I wanted frosted tips, she was so excited to be able to do something viewed as ‘girly’ with her child. My mom always took care of buying my girlfriends presents and little things in high school and she almost always nailed the presentation and the gift and very rarely did I come home without a smile (blowjobs with braces? That was an accomplishment back then!) There were the days where I’d hear my mom telling my younger brothers to ‘stop acting like a puss, it’s just a cut’ after sports. I can vividly remember being in middle school and hearing my mom screaming at me from the bleachers in the civic center while I was playing hockey.
“FUCKING HIT HIM BACK ZACHARY!”
I can remember looking up into the stands and seeing other parents watching my mom with a mix of fright and glee when I would take a shift on the ice because you never knew what the woman would scream at me next. The same went for when I ran cross country. I was never fast and my mom, when she would sneak onto the course to yell at me, would remind me that I didn’t want to be the loser fat kid at the very end of the race. The endearments were never met to be hurtful; my mom knew how uncomfortable I was being fat and having shoulder hair when I was 16, it was more an appreciative motivation trying to help me feel better in the long run.
College came and went and mom was always on me about grades, whether I was fucking around too much, was the gambling distracting from the end goal of becoming a doctor. “Are you seeing anyone? Are you using protection?” were two of my moms favorite questions to ask and leave voicemails on my land line phone in the dorms. When my grandpa died after I was done, I had gone back to my hometown to watch the burial proceedings and the special service he was getting from his Native American friends, there exists a picture in which my mom is consoling my sobbing father and my youngest brother with the most stoic look and I try and try to get that picture but I’ve been told I can’t make it public until she’s gone from the world. “Don’t make money off me until I’m dead so your father can’t touch it.”
When I went through testicular cancer, I made the foolish and grave mistake of not telling my parents until I had had the surgery. Holy mother of fuck. You have never dealt with an enraged woman until you’ve put yourself in a situation like that. Those overdone, hashed out scenes in flicks where the girl hugs you, cries, and then slaps the spit out of your cheeks? Allison Posso recreated the best of those scenes in one fluid motion. Yeah yeah, it was stupid not telling my own parents about my cancer, but I felt like a burden already, and there were so many other family drama dynamics going on with my younger brothers at the time that I thought, hey, if I’m not dying, then I can just tell them when it’s over, right?
I love my mom. She’s helped me through so many things. I don’t care if todays word is a brash term, or a term of endearment, mom has always provided for my brothers and I and she has gone above and beyond to take an active role in being a part of my life even when I act like I don’t want anyone around.