Sunday, April 27, 2008

LETTERS FROM STEVO...Family Trilogy Part I: The Legend of Ma Busch!


As the title indicates, I'm starting part I of a three part trilogy creatively titled: Family Trilogy!!! Part I is in honor of my mother, Laura Busch or "Ma Busch" whose birthday it just so happens to be this week. Just a little background on Ma Busch. She was raised in Farmington, NM by Bud and Memo. She graduated high school and went to college at Eastern New Mexico in Portales. While in high school and college, Ma Busch was noted for her abilities in choir and drama. After college, she married my dad (more on him in Part II) and converted to the LDS church. They soon moved to Albuquerque and gave birth to their beloved Stevo. Apparently at birth I came out blue with the cord wrapped around my neck. I had heard what the outside was like and wanted no part of it! Following my illustrious birth, there were apparently a couple of other siblings that came along (more on them in Part III). We soon moved to a small town outside of Farmington called Kirtland. Ma Busch scored a gig as a high school drama/english/communications teacher. Even though I attended this same high school, I mysteriously never had her as a teacher. She later admitted it was intentional as she wanted no part of me as a student. Her extra curricular activity has been coaching the drama club. She put together all the school plays. She's had a good reputation at school, she has generally been liked by the students. One student in particular would call her "mom." He was the varsity quarterback and renowned partier and troublemaker, (no, not me). Anytime he would see her in the hall he would yell out, "hi mom!" She is retiring this year, so anytime she calls to vent about her job my response is always, "why do you care...you're retiring!"


As the result of being a teacher, she was off during the summers so she could always be there with her "beloved" sons! Wait! Who am I kidding??? We were awful!!! She was also the "Kool-aid mom" for all the other kids in the neighborhood. Of course she looks back at it with fondness now but at the time she couldn't stand it. She would often growl, "I'm not the kool-aid mom!!!" Because of her kool-aid momness she became the surrogate mom of our buddy who lived across the street. We did everything with this kid! Ironically, he's now in a federal penitentiary, so I guess that should speak volumes of her surrogate mothering ability! Then of course there is the corporal punishment. As part of the trilogy, I'm going to rate on a scale of 1 to 10 my parents overall spanking ability. The rating will be judged on two criteria: pain factor and weapons used. I'll give Ma Busch a 7. She would often use either a wooden spoon or brush which greatly enhanced the pain factor. We were usually spanked for fighting which just so happened to be our favorite summer activity...especially in clothing retail stores!


Now, in order for me to paint a more vivid picture of Ma Busch I need to discuss her personality traits. She has a very good sense of humor capped off with a very memorable laugh. She is notorious for this laugh! As kids, my parents would have friends over and they would make us go to bed. As we were attempting to go to sleep we would be suddenly awakened by this insanely loud laugh that would literally scare us! She also has a great singing voice and loves to be in and a part of plays. She has always loved being on a stage and performing for people...a total drama queen! As Bud is a dancing queen, Ma Busch is a drama queen. One joke in our family is that Ma Busch has two main food groups: ranch dressing and chocolate! If it ain't covered in chocolate or she can't dip it in ranch, she don't want it!!! If she ever needs an emergency blood transplant I'm seriously calling Hidden Valley! She bleeds that stuff. Then there are her "YaYa's" as she refers to them. They are a bunch of ladies that work for the school that get together every week to hang out and gossip. She of course named them after the "YaYa Sisterhood." She claims they only get to together to gossip, but I assert that there is some sort of secret combination going on! They're probably running some kind of organized crime syndicate. Of course she would never admit to it because they probably abide by 'Omerta.


She currently has three grandkids with a fourth on the way. Of course they love her and Mya, being the eldest grandchild gave her the moniker that she will be forever known as a grandmother...LaLa. Mya was very young and was trying to pronounce her name and came up with...LaLa. She is now referred to as "Grandma LaLa" by all of the grandkids. Mya likes to call her every so often to gossip and throw her daddy under the bus. What amazes Amy and I is how similar Mya and Ma Busch actually are. They share an affinity for drama, music, chocolate, ranch and gossip!


So that's Ma Busch in a nutshell...If I could use to two words to describe her it would be...DRAMA QUEEN!!!


2 comments:

LaLa said...

As some comedian once said, I resemble that remark."

dvecchio said...

If the rest of the Ya Yas have children like you I'm sure it's more of a self-help or 12 step program - step one: admit my children are the problem step two: drink magic elixir from Dizzyland and take 2 white pills our idiot children brought back from the armory step three: during work hours eat chocolate until I can make the magical trip to Dizzyland
and so on...that poor woman!