Life in the Corn Minion Number Two: Errytay.

Name: Eresatay Otortipay (that's "Errytay" to you, thankee kindly.)
Location: Banguh, Maine. (Ayuh.)
Occupation: Uh, she squeezed me out of her loins, so "mother."
Little Known Fact about Errytay: She can pound down a Captain Nick's Seafood Platter like it's nobody's business. (It's about seven lbs. of food).

The first time I met Errytay was when one of my old man's "wee swimmers" created the magic of life with one of her eggs. As I frolicked about in the warmth of her uterus, I demanded sacrifice: McDonald's french fries. Sadly for her, Salt Lake City/Clearfield/Ogden, the site of my nativity, did not have a McDonalds in late 1979, so apparently (so she says; she is the Mistress of Lies) she made my old man take her somewhere that did. Like Colorado.

So, I was born [merriment!]. Like the Baby Jesus Himself, I was birthed painlessly and in the span of about five minutes. When I came out, I cut my own umbilical cord and began to read an ethnography about Egyptian Bedouins.

Twenty-one years pass.

[Now, Errytay mothereffing hates this story I'm about to tell. But it's my favorite story about her, so I will press on. Don't worry, Errytay; it's not the one about how you got really hooched up and beat me within an inch of my life with a crowbar for playing my Peter Cetera cassette too loudly while you were on that seven month bender. ]

Twenty-one years later, I'm on the phone in the hallway of Bilkent University's Yurt Yetmiş Sekiz, "0" kat (Dorm 78, Ground floor) calling her to ask her if all was going to plan for preparations for picking me up the next day at Logan "Seventh Circle of Hell" Airport in Boston. I'd spent about six months in Turkey, and during that time I could only call Errytay seven or eight times because, uh, I was using $10 phonecards that would only let me talk for three and a half minutes. This was one of those times.

Now: It's a source of family contention, and will remain so until the end of all things, whether I actually said that I'd be entering American airspace the next day. I feel I did. Just so you know.

At the ass-crack of dawn the next morning, there I was at Esenboğa (Ankara) Airport, saying goodbye to my Turkish brother Dinçer. One of the last things he said to me before I got on the plane was "Hey, did you call your ma last night?" I said that I had indeed called her to confirm that my Uncle Utchbay and Aunt Ondaray would be picking me up (they live in Manchester, NH, a forty minute drive away) and then taking me back to the mothership the next day.

I got on the plane in Ankara and ended up with a layover in Zurich, Switzerland. In my weepiness about leaving Turkey, I ate about thirteen pounds of Swiss chocolate and then got on my transatlantic flight.

I hit Boston in the middle of a torrential thunderstorm, and my flight was the last transatlantic flight to touch down that night. Turns out all the rest were being magically diverted to Bangor, Maine. {Satan!} I cleared customs and took my metric tonne of luggage to a little Slap'n'Crap kiosk and tried to used Turkish lira to pay for a dry little turkey sandwich (turkey! I almost wept) and then called Errytay.

Ringing, ringing.

Errytay: Hello?
Me: Hi, Mom! I'm at Logan! Where are Utchbay and Ondaray?
Errytay: Hahahahahahahaha! No you're not!
Me: Uh, yeah I am. [holds reciever up in the air, wherein she could hear the announcements overhead; the word "Logan" was used twice]
Errytay: {defensive} YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE HERE TOMORROW NIGHT!
Me: But, uh, I'm here now.
Errytay: [frantic] I'll call them and have them come now.
Me: Don't worry about it. I'll be OK.
Errytay: No you won't!

[She hangs up to call them. They're magically not home, as they are attending their Harley Davidson Club meeting. The franticness continues in earnest.]

In the end, they came home, heard my mother's twenty-eight plaintive voicemails, called her, and they came and got me. I guess what happened was that Errytay hadn't reckoned that I'd be flying against time, and that my Boston arrival would actually be the same day I left.

The reason that this is my favorite story about my [now mortified all over again] mother is that, of all people on the earth, she's the last for whom this sort of thing would happen. She's early to everything by at least a half hour. She pays her bills the nanosecond she opens them. And, she managed to raise two bizarre larvae nearly single-handedly in a new city and a new state. Of all of the things I hope that I get from her one day, it's that strength, that togetherness, that I think we all should aspire to.

Unless she's driving to Boston, because then she's a raving lunatic.

Kisses, mom!

I remain, as ever,

Dom