I felt some of the old apprehension...

I felt some of the old apprehension when I phoned Mother to invite her to the Mother’s Day flute and piano recital at 2 p.m. today at the Santa Monica Main Library Auditorium, 6th Street and Santa Monica Boulevard. Over the line, I could hear chain saws snarling, and a very large dog was barking--maybe a wolf.

“Speak up!” Mother said. “You know how I feel about you pussyfooting around.”

“Otto Stampe on flute,” I squeaked through a throat constricted by terror. “Phyllis Mathews on piano. You can view artworks by Stampe on the upper floor of the library. Admission and parking are free. Information: (310) 476-7183.”

“Fiddlesticks,” Mother would have said if she’d been any ordinary 60-year-old lady. What she did say, I can’t repeat here. Then she sighed and voiced a familiar complaint: “Why did my son, of all people, turn out to be such a sissy?”

Mother, I ought to explain, was a pioneer in overcoming gender stereotypes. Long before Shirley Muldowney, the race-car driver, or Sally Ride, the astronaut--never mind Hillary Rodham Clinton--she blazed her own trail in life with a double-bitted ax.

She’s a lumberjack.

Mother grew up in a genteel part of Westwood, but family legend has it that while her sisters played with dolls, she was chopping at banisters and porch railings with a toy hatchet. When she reached legal age--sporting a flannel shirt, a chaw of tobacco and formidable biceps--she hoisted a shiny new chain saw over her shoulder and set off for the North Woods.

You may recall the company that uses a picture of a sinewy young logger to advertise the strength of its paper products. What you may not know is that this picture is based on a photo of Mother taken in the 1950s, about the time she met my father--about whom all she’ll say is that he was 10 times the man I’ll ever hope to be, and that his last name was Bunyan.

“I suppose he had a big blue ox named Babe,” I said once as a teen-ager, in the dryly witty tone that had become my only means of self-assertion.

She nearly turned me into kindling.

Now I said: “Look, Mother. I accepted your way of life--the leaky tents, the wolverine stew. It was you. Why can’t you let me be me? It just so happens I like the finer things--the ballet, the foreign cinema, events like this recital. Why don’t you let me share them with you?”

*

No one, perhaps, can appreciate the courage it took for me to say this after all these years.

But Mother seemed to have a clue. She was silent for a long time. Giant trees crashed behind her.

“Can I bring my peavey?” she asked at last.

A peavey is a long pole with a steel point and a hook on it, used for jockeying logs around in millponds. It looks like a harpoon.

I started to suggest that if she was concerned about security in the city, she could carry a discreet little can of Mace in her purse. But then I remembered that Mother doesn’t have a purse--just a moose-hide wallet in the hip pocket of her jeans.

“Fine with me,” I said, “if you promise not to yell ‘Timber!’ in the middle of the performance. OK?”

“It’s a deal,” she said.