Love your Parents

Today, I'd like to post some of the extracts from the book 'For One More Day' by Mitch Albom. It's about a person, as a father and as a son, a typical man named Chuck Benetto.

Chick still remembered the moment when ‘his mother stand up for him’ and how ‘he did not stand up for his mother’. Try to compare to that of your life with your parents right now ^^

‘Times My Mother Stood Up for Me’:

…Suddenly, out of nowhere, a German shepherd lunges at me. Awowwow! It is tethered to a clothesline. Awowwow! It rises on its hind legs, straining the leash. Awowwow!
I whirl and run. I am screaming. My mother dashes to me.
‘What?’ she hollers, grabbing my elbows. ‘What is it?’
‘A dog!’
She exhales. ‘A dog? Where? Around there?
I nod, crying.
She marches me around the house. There is the dog. It howls again. Awowwowowow! I jumped back. But my mother yanks me forward. And she barks. She barks. She makes the best barking sound I have ever heard a human being make.
The dog falls into a whimpering couch. My mother turns.
‘You have to show them who’s boss, Charley,’ she says…


…That night I ask my mother. What causes an echo? She gets the dictionary, and we sit in the den.
‘Let him do it himself,’ my father snaps.
‘Len,’ she says, ‘I’m allowed to help him.’
For an hour, she works with me. I memorize the lines. I practice by standing in front of her.
‘What causes an echo?’ she begins.
‘The persistence of sound after the source has stopped,’ I say.
‘What is one thing required for an echo?’
‘The sound must bounce off something.’
‘When can you hear an echo?’
‘When it is quiet and other sounds are absorbed.’
She smiles. ‘Good.’ Then she says, ‘Echo,’ and covers her mouth and mumbles, ‘Echo, echo, echo.’
My sister, who has been watching our performance, points and yells, ‘That’s Mommy talking! I see her!
My father turns on the TV set.
‘What a colossal waste of time,’ he says…


…I am nine years old. I am at the local library. The woman behind the desks looks over her glasses. I have chosen 20 000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. I like the drawings on the cover and I like the idea of people living under the ocean. I haven’t looked at how big the words are, or how narrow the print. The librarian studies me. My shirt is untucked and one shoe is untied.
‘This is too hard for you,’ she says.
I watch her put it on a shelf behind her. It might as well be locked in a vault. I go back to the children’s section and choose a picture book about a monkey. I return to the desk. She stamps this one without comment.
When my mother drives up, I scramble into the front seat of her car. She sees the book I’ve chosen.
‘Haven’t you read that one already?’ she asks.
‘The lady wouldn’t let me take the one I wanted.’
‘What lady?’
‘The librarian lady.’
She turns off the ignition.
‘Why wouldn’t she let you take it?’
‘She said it was too hard.’
‘What was too hard?’
‘The book.’
My mother yanks me from the car. She marches me through the door and up the front desk.
‘I’m Mrs. Benetto. This is my son, Charley. Did you tell him a book was too hard for him to read?’
The librarian stiffens. She is much older than my mother, and I am surprised at my mother’s tone, given how she usually talks to old people.
‘He wanted to take out 20 000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne,’ she says, touching her glasses. ‘He’s too young. Look at him.’
I lower my head. Look at me.
‘Where’s the book?’ my mother says.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Where’s the book?’
The woman reaches behind her. She plops it on the counter, as if to make a point by its heft. My mother grabs the book and shoves it in my arms.
‘Don’t you ever tell a child something’s too hard,’ she snaps. ‘And never-NEVER-this child.’
Next thing I know I am being yanked out the door, hanging tightly to Jules Verne. I feel like we have just robbed a bank, my mother and me, and I wonder if we’re going to get into trouble…


…’Do you know how to do this?’
‘Of course,’ I say. I have no idea how to do it.
‘Go ahead,’ she says.
I squeeze the cream from the tube. I dab it on my face.
‘You rub it in,’ she says.
I rub it in. I keep going until my cheeks and chin are covered. I take the razor.
‘Be careful,’ she says. ‘Pull in one direction, not up and down.’
‘I know,’ I say, annoyed. I am uncomfortable doing this in front of my mother. It should be my father. She knows it. I know it. Neither one of us says it.
I follow her instructions. I pull in one direction, watching the cream scrape away in a broad line. When I pull the blade over my chin, it sticks and I feel a cut.
‘Ooh, Charley, are you alright?’
She reaches for me, then pulls her hands back as if she knows she wouldn’t.
‘Stop worrying,’ I say, determined to keep going.
She watches. I continue. I pull down around my jaw and my neck. When I am finished, she puts her cheek in one hand and smiles. She whispers, in a British accent, ‘By George, you’ve got it.
That makes me feel good.
‘Now wash your face,’ she says…


‘Times I Didn’t Stood Up for My Mother’

…She cuts up white rags and old towels and wraps them around me, holding them in place with safety pins. Then she layers the rags with toilet paper and tape. It takes a long time, but when she is finished, I look in the mirror. I am a mummy. I lift my shoulders and sway back and forth.
‘Oooh, you’re very scary,’ my mother says.
She drives me to school. We start our parade. The more I walk, the looser the rags get. Then, about two blocks out, it begins to rain. Next thing I know, the toilet paper is dissolving. The rags droop. Soon they fall to my ankles, wrists, and neck, and you can see my undershirt and pajama bottoms, which my mother thought would make better undergarments.
‘Look at Charley!’ the other kids squeal. They are laughing. I am burning red. I want to disappear, but where do you go in the middle of a parade?
When we reach the schoolyard, where the parents are waiting with cameras, I am a wet, sagging mess of rags and toilet paper fragments. I see my mother first. As she spots me, she raises her hand to her mouth. I burst into tears.
‘You ruined my life!’ I yell….


…’You know what Len? Make it yourself next time. You and this whole Italian cooking thing. Charley, eat!’
My father sneers and shakes his head. ‘Same old story,’ he says.
I chew. I swallow. I look at him. I look at my mother. She drops her shoulders in exasperation. Now they are both waiting.
‘It’s not right,’ I mumble, looking at my father.
He snorts and shoots my mother a look.
‘Even the kid knows,’ he says…


…’Ho! Ho!’ she tries again.
Roberta is scrunched up like a bug, peeking over her fists. She whispers, ‘Chick, shut it off! You’ll scare him away!’ But I can only see the absurdity of the situation, how we are going to have to fake everything from now on: fake a full dinner table, fake a female Santa Claus, fake being a family instead of three quarters of a family.
‘It’s just Mom,’ I say flatly.
‘Ho! Ho! Ho!’ my mother says.
‘It is not! Roberta says.
‘Yes it is, you twerp. It’s Mom. Santa Claus isn’t a girl, stupid.’
I keep that light on my mother and I see her posture change- her head drops back, her shoulders slump, like a fugitive Santa caught by the cops. Roberta starts crying. I can tell my mother wants to yell at me, but she can’t do that and blow her cover, so she stares me down between her stocking cap and her cotton beard, and I feel my father’s absence all over the room. Finally, she dumps the pillowcase of small presents onto the floor and walks out the front door without so much as another ‘ho, ho, ho.’ My sister runs back to bed, howling with tears. I am left on the stairs with my flashlight, illuminating an empty room and a tree…


…’You’re a hypocrite!’
‘Don’t you use that word!’
‘Why not, Mom? You always want me to use big words in a sentence. There’s a sentence. You smoke. I can’t. My mother is a hypocrite!’…
…’I am taking these away,’ she yells, grabbing the cigarettes.
‘And you are not going out, mister!’
‘I don’t care!’ I glare at her. ‘And why do you have to dress like that? You make me sick!’
‘I what?’ Now she is on me, slapping my face. ‘I WHAT? I make you’- slap!- ‘sick? I make’- slap!- ‘you SICK?- slap!- ‘Is that what you’- slap!- ‘said?’- slap, slap!- ‘Is it? Is that what you THINK OF ME?’
‘No! No!’ I yell. ‘Stop it!’
I cover my head and duck away. I run down the stairs and out the garage. I stay away until well past dark. When I finally come home, her bedroom door is closed and I think I hear her crying. I go to my room. The cigarettes are still there. I light one up and start crying myself…


…The woman halts. She pulls the candy back.
‘Don’t you mean Miss Benetto?’ she says.
None of us know what to say. The woman’s expression has changed and hose drawn eyebrows are straining downward.
‘Now you listen to me, sweetie. Tell your mother that my husband doesn’t need to see her little fashion show by his shop every day. Tell her to not get any grand ideas, you hear me? No grand ideas.’
Joanie looks at me. The back of my neck is burning.
‘Can I have that one, too?’ Roberta asks, her eyes on the chocolate.
The woman pulls it closer to her chest.
‘Come on, Roberta, I mumble, yanking her away.
‘Must run in the family,’ the woman says, ‘You all want your hands on everything. You tell her what I said! No grand ideas, you hear me?’
We are already halfway across her lawn…


…In baseball, a player can tell when he’s holding his own bat and when he’s holding someone else’s. Which is how I felt with that shovel in my hands. It was someone else’s. It did not belong to me. It belonged to a son whose last words to her were not in anger. It belonged to a son who hadn’t raced off to satisfy the latest whim of his distant old man, who, in keeping the record intact, was absent from this family gathering, having decided, ’It’s better if I’m not there, I don’t want to upset anybody.’
That son should have stayed that weekend, sleeping with his wife in the guest room, having Sunday brunch with the family. That son would have been there when his mother collapsed. That son might have saved her.
But that son was not around…

Realize that the time you can have with your parents and your family isn’t infinity, but full of uncertainty. You never know what happens tomorrow, so do I. So, be a filial children to your parents and be a responsible parent to your children. Love your family, appreciate them…