Here I am, at the Deer Isle (Maine) Writers’ group, with a bunch of other 70- and 80-year-old and maybe even 90-year-old retired white people. Just like last time.
Only this time, the writing prompt is something about family mottoes. So here I go.
Family motto
I grew up in a family without a motto. I raised a family without a motto. That doesn’t motto to me in the least.
Even though we didn’t have a motto, I can find phrases I can turn into mottos because the writing prompt has motto-vated me.
Here’s how I’ll do it. I’ll remember one of our family stories. I’ll recall the dialog and pluck the motto that’s there for the plucking.
That’s because I’m a mean motto-plucker and a real go-getter.
The QFE’s motto
If my family of origin had a motto, it would be one that my Mom, the QFE—the Queen of Fucking Everything—would say. “Whatevah!” She’d say it in her strong Brooklyn accent and the gravelly voice that came from years of smoking. “Whatevah!” That’s not a bad motto.
I can pluck some other mottos from my memory. (Did I tell you I was a motto-plucker?)
Did someone die? Our motto for that situation was “Keep the FUN in FUNeral.”
Does it hurt? “Only when I laugh.” Yeah, right. That’s not a motto. But does it really motto that it’s not?
My Mom was the Mother of all Mottos. The Motto Superior, you might say. Toward the end of her life, my Mom’s motto became, “Every day is a blessing.”
I’m toward the end of my life, too, and one of my mottos is: “Everything is a miracle.”
And it is.
Take a look around.
Miracles everywhere you look.
Or, as Peter Mayer sings, “Everything is holy now.”