December is a difficult month for me. Not only because of that holiday I hate and try harder every year to ignore (how does one ignore an elephant that big?), but because December 20 is my mother’s birthday.

Which shouldn’t be a sad thing, but she’s been dead for 21 years. So December is a reminder of the woman who is no longer physically present in my life, but is still there in so many other ways.

Mothers are like that, I guess. I think a father can be forgotten a lot easier than a mother. Perhaps because we all come from our mother’s bodies. We grow from a collection of cells to an actual miniature human attached to their wombs by a cord. Humans don’t get more intimate than that. The cord can be cut, but not removed.

I have so many of her traits. I’m always cleaning my apartment. And things have to be just right, in their place, or I’m not comfortable. Mama kept our house immaculate. You could eat off the floor. I’m not kidding. She was down on her hands and knees every morning and sometimes evenings, too, with the bucket and the sponge making sure there wasn’t a crumb or a spot on it.

Even when we lived in the old house in a deteriorating section of South Philly, Mama was always scrubbing something. If she could, she would’ve given the roaches and rats little rags to clean the insides of the walls they inhabited. When you entered her house, you had to remove your shoes, so you wouldn’t track in dirt. Back then, no one else in our neighborhood insisted on that.

I’m outspoken. As she was. She didn’t hesitate to say what was on her mind. Even if it offended someone. I learned from her that if you don’t speak up, you’re going to get ulcers because it’s going to sit inside and eat you up. 

I’m stubborn. “Testa dura” (strong-willed), as they say in southern Italian.  She was, too. When she put her mind down to something, you couldn’t budge her. If a relative did something she didn’t like (which happened all the time), she held a grudge forever. My father was just as hard-headed, which made for an explosive home environment. Two immoveable objects colliding time and time again.

Passionate. It came with being Latin-blooded, I guess, but Mama seemed to possess more than her fair share. 

Growing up is like being assimilated by the Borg. Like it or not, you’re part of the collective called la famiglia. You can rebel, as I and as so many others of my generation did. You can even sometimes successfully reject almost everything it instilled in you.

Not me. When it comes down to it, I am my mother’s son and will probably always be. In December, I am more aware of it than ever.