My Mother’s Creamer is Baileys

My Mother called me the other day. The con­ver­sa­tion went some­thing like this to the best of my mem­ory, which may have been a lit­tle hazy given my gen­eral lack of sleep:

Phone rings. I answer & before I can say anything.

“You for­got creamer.”

“Excuse me? I for­got what? I don’t have your creamer.”

“You for­got creamer, in your cof­fee, it doesn’t count. Bai­leys Irish Cream, it doesn’t count.”

Now if you didn’t know my mother you might won­der what was going on, call­ing her daugh­ter up and telling her she for­got to bring her a bot­tle of Bai­leys. Espe­cially since I wasn’t com­ing over. 

“I did?”

It took me a few sec­onds then I real­ized what she meant. She was call­ing to tell me that I for­got about cof­fee drinks in my recent post about how to know if what you are drink­ing is alco­hol or more accu­rately how pretty much noth­ing can ever be alco­holic. I appar­ently for­got the rule about cof­fee drinks. I don’t know what came over me & she was ready to set me straight as any good mother would.

“Yes. You for­got Bai­leys. When you put Bai­leys in your cof­fee, it’s really just a creamer. It’s not alco­hol. Alco­hol in cof­fee doesn’t count.”

“Really, you are call­ing me to tell me that your Bai­leys & cof­fee doesn’t count, it’s creamer. I am sure peo­ple thought I was jok­ing about those rules but you know now that you called I’ll prob­a­bly add this to the blog.”

Yes, like a crazy per­son I a) let my mother know I blogged b) gave her the web­site address & c) am crazy enough to blog about her.

I did men­tion that I’ve had a hard time adjust­ing to hav­ing a new baby in the house, right? Can I blame him for the whole thing?

So what if he is only 5 months old, adorable, and has the light of rain­bows shine out from his fin­ger­tips & toes. Or that he has the world’s sweet­est smile, laughs at the antics of his 3 older sib­lings who adore him more than any­thing (and are equally adorable & yes I can write that all I want, I’m their mother), and has fairies who float around him sprin­kling “I’m the world’s cute­ness baby” dust every­where he goes mak­ing me almost for­get that he is keep­ing me from get­ting a con­sis­tent stretch of sleep for more than 2 hours. Blow back is part of life, bet­ter he learn it from his own mother than from strange baby at the play­ground. Those babies can be a tough crowd, trust me I’ve learned the hard way.

And now I’m learn­ing that appar­ently my mother doesn’t drink, except when she drinks but then it’s not a real drink because it’s just her creamer. I am sure this has some­thing to with being part Irish, since it’s Bai­leys. I am think­ing that all Irish women (even if only part Irish, or only Irish on St. Patrick’s Day) have this excep­tion to cof­fee, it’s in their secret hand­book. And I’m won­der­ing why I didn’t get a copy when I gave birth to my first child. I mean HELLO this is infor­ma­tion that we need make sure gets passed down from gen­er­a­tion to generation.

On sec­ond thought scratch the hand­book idea. The last thing I need to do is be blamed for adding to stereo­types about the Irish. We’ll keep that between you, me, & the 5 other peo­ple who read this blog, k? But I still think the story is funny, so here’s the end.

“I mean, Mom, I will go back and put a post up about you call­ing me to tell me that Bai­leys is just creamer.”

Her response, “Oh, I know. But it’s true. Like a fancy creamer.”

And I’ll know when she has read this post because my phone will ring & she’s going to point out that I got some point of the con­ver­sa­tion wrong. Which is prob­a­bly true, I’m sure I’m for­get­ting some details, given the lack of sleep thing or the kids run­ning around dis­tract­ing me with their silli­ness. How­ever, I have got­ten the gist cor­rect. My mother called me to jus­tify Bai­leys as a just as creamer in cof­fee. This why her & my father make a good pair, they are comics at heart.

So next time you order a cof­fee drink, add the Bai­leys & just let them know it’s fancy creamer not alco­hol. Tell them Mom sent you.

(btw–Mom, I love that you have a sense of humor.)

Tagged as: bailey's never counts, mother-daughter, my mother reads my blog