Tributes to Mom

About two years ago, I imitated a Time Magazine cover article on the 100 Most Influential People to do this tribute for Mom. 

Mother, Peace Advocate, Pianist, Costume Designer, Grower of Morning Glories

Nadine Martin  By Tina Martin

NADINE MARTIN DOESN’T JUST INSPIRE US.  SHE AFFIRMS US WITH HER intelligence, authenticity, depth and compassion.  We see the best of ourselves in her and marvel that no matter what she’s doing, she brings 100% of herself to the experience.

            I first met Nadine Martin, AKA Mom, when I was born.  She was and is and always will be my mother.  She made my Halloween costumes when I was a child and my formal gowns when I was an adolescent, and when I was 63 and she was 88 she sewed on my missing button.  I grew up with her as a model of positive energy, talent and intelligence put to good use.  I watched as she brought up five children, some with special needs,--well, maybe all with special needs-- and kept reading an extraordinary amount of good books while I was reading movie magazines and love comics.  I grew up hearing her play show tunes and Tom Leher songs after we kids were in bed and she and my father had friends from the Idaho State Hospital over.  I was in the back seat as she drove hundreds of miles to our next home after our dad had already moved to his next job.  I listened as waitresses, who said they’d heard it all,  marveled at how nice she treated her children.  I watched as she took correspondence classes at the University of South Carolina, always impressing her professors with her insights and ability to articulate complex ideas, and I was on campus when she and I both made all A’s her senior year of college, my freshman year, when she graduated with honors in keeping with her academic success as a student in Los Angeles, when she skipped grades and started UCLA at sixteen.  I marveled at her courage at changing her life after twenty-five years of marriage to a brilliant but difficult-to-live-with husband and began a relationship with an amazing woman my age, with whom she set up—or re-set up—her home and travelled all over the world.  She has always been adored by the men in my life, particularly my current meque (mejor que un esposo) Javier and my son, Jonathan, with whom she founded the Jo-Nani Duo back in the 1990s, when my son, now 30 and living in NYC, was just 15.  People continue to marvel at her piano playing, something she learned to do as a child, when she was also the accompanist for the school Glee Club.  I also marvel at her wit and wisdom.  Never one to invade my privacy, she first asked about the man in my life about a year after I mentioned him.  When she asked me, “So who is this man you love?” and I said, “I wish I knew.  His comings and goings are mysterious, so I suspect he’s either a drug dealer or a CIA agent,” she said, “Well, I hope he’s a drug dealer because I don’t think CIA agents are very nice people.”  When I said, “Not everyone thinks drug dealers are so nice,” she said, “It depends on the drug.”  When she saw the beautiful flowers my meque had brought me, she advised me to keep him in my life, and when I told her that he was wonderful but that I knew he sometimes lied to me, she said, “Well, that could work…as long as you know he’s lying.” 

            She’s now going through a hard time, when her health isn’t as good as it once was, and she has to take medicine to combat myasthenia gravis and macular degeneration.  She also has to deal with Irritable Bowel Syndrome and occasional confusion.  But she continues to be a source of inspiration as she works her crossword puzzles, plays the piano, grows morning glories from seeds, and makes clever comments.  She’s still concerned about the state of the world, and among the clippings I have are two of my mother and me at peace demonstrations—one from the 1980s, when we were protesting against the Contras in Central America, and one from just two years ago, when we were opposing the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan.  People adore my mother, Nadine Martin.  As a neighbor said this past summer, “I’d like to be your mother when I grow up.” 

Another tribute I used to pay my mother was in response to people who said they’d like to be like her “at that age.”  I’d say, “I’d like to be like her now!”

But now I wouldn’t.  And maybe Mother wishes that she weren’t.

Tomorrow she may not get “rave reviews” when we take her to the Neurology Clinic at Kaiser for her tests. 

But now, now, I’ve got to catch up with the past and the weekend I saw that Mom’s short-term memory loss was not limited to torture at Abu Ghraib.