Tag Archives: mother

Thunder Explained to a Child

Text:

“The angels are bowling”

Context:

“The angels are bowling,” my mom use to tell me when I was a child. I was so afraid of thunderstorms, so my mom told me that thunder was just the angels in Heaven bowling. I stopped being afraid of thunder then and would just complain that the angels always had to go bowling when I was trying to fall asleep.

Analysis:

In order to help me overcome my fear of thunderstorms, my mother constructed a legend – a story set in the real world and told as if it was true. Now, I asked her if she came up with the legend on her own, and she tells me she’s not sure. She may have heard it from somewhere else or come up with it on the spot. My family and I are Christians, so my mother used emic, or insider’s, language when discussing that thunderstorms are just angels bowling to esoterically communicate to me that I had nothing to fear.

mother daughter proverb

fields:
AGE: mother and daughter current(50/23) when used (40/15)
Date_of_performance: 02/15/25
Language: English
Nationality: Canadian
Occupation: Artist/ retail worker
Primary Language: English
Residence: Toronto, canada

Quote: “For beauty you must suffer”

A folk phrase used by mothers to their daughters when teaching them the grooming rituals of a grown woman. from shaving, to waxing, to tight heels, or spanks its a way to acknowledge the effort one must put in to meet the beauty standard.

This phrase is was used by my mother and her mother before her, they were british woman so i don’t doubt that this is a folk phrase that can be traced back to the creation of the corset.

the folk that use this are woman and sister or motherly circles.

My Mother

Age: 53

Occupation: Landscaper

Residence: Los Angeles, CA

Performance Date: November 28, 2024

Primary Language: Spanish

Language: English

Story

EG: “Have you ever witnessed or been told of an unexplainable occurrence?”

RG: ” Let me think… hmmm. Oh yes, I do remember one. This one is about one of my uncles when he was a little boy, and it all happened back home in Guatemala… uh maybe around 12 years old…He was heading back home one night from working on one of the fields and then he saw his mom on an open field calling his name. But uh… the weird thing was that his mother had already passed away. But with the innocence of a child, he believed that his mother was really calling him, so, uhm, he followed her through this open field in the dark because she kept telling him that there was a cow or something like that. This is what my uncle remembers. When all this is happening, he uh… actually goes missing for about a day. Now… from my parents I was told that when they found my uncle he was by a huge rock, which was basically by, uh… a cliff. His mother said that if he moved, he would have fallen. The devastating thing is that when they found my uncle he was slouched, and he remained that way for the rest of his life. No one knows, including himself, what was done to him to cause him to stay that way. “

Informants Opinion

EG: “Do you think that it was his mother’s spirit calling him that night?”

RG: “Umm, not at all actually because I don’t think his mother would have hurt him or put him in danger in that way. Instead, I believe that it could have been La Llorona because she is known to also lead people to cliffs. It was a bad spirit that night, but luckily my uncle was still alive when they found him. But uhm I still wonder what was done to him that caused him to permanently stay slouched.”

Final Thoughts

I can agree with the informant that the spirit that night was not the boys’ mother and possibly La Llorona. She is commonly known to take children away when they are alone at night, but this time it just seemed like she tried to lead the boy to his death. Also, since it was late at night and dark the possibility of him encountering some kind of ghost was high. After hearing this story, I also wonder what happened to the boy after he lost remembrance during the interaction. This story also can teach people not to let their children out on their own at night, or just in general to avoid being out dark places alone.

La Llorona

  1. Details
    1. Collected on 03/23/2024 
    2. Genre: Legend
    3. Language: English 
    4. Nationality: Mexican
    5. Relationship to Informant: Friend’s Father 
  2. Text
    1. Summary
      1. The informant’s mother told him a version of the La Llorona legend where there was a woman who lived her life in torment after her children fell into the river and died. 
    2. Direct transcription of folklore:
      1. “You are going into my memory banks here, but my mother used to tell us about this woman who was very afflicted because her children had drowned in the river. And you could hear her wailing ‘ah mis hijos’ – oh, my children. So, it was almost a tale my mom would tell us so not to do dangerous things because she would be forever depressed. It wasn’t so much that this was an evil person that did something bad because I think La Llorona – the original one – drowned her children. In the version my mom would tell us, the children fell into the river and drowned. So, she would wail forever for her children.”
  3. Context 
      1. The informant is the father of my friend. He grew up in a small town in Mexico. This story was told to the informant by his mother when he was a child. 
  4. Analysis 
      1. This oikotype of the La Llorona legend portrays the woman as a grieving mother who lost her children. This legend was told by a mother to her children to prevent them from risking their lives by doing dangerous things. This legend tells the children that if they aren’t careful, they can cause their mother to mourn for the rest of her life. 

Lemon Water – The Cure for a Stomach Ache?

Text: “Ever since I was little my mom has always prescribed me a glass of water with lemon squeezed into it whenever my stomach hurt or I felt nauseous. She did this because it helped her whenever her stomach hurt during her chemotherapy treatments. It never really worked for me but I kept doing it because I did not want to hurt her feelings and it always seemed to make her happy that she had this “cure” for stomach discomfort.

Context: AG is a friend of mine from Sydney Australia and it was at first pretty tough for him to come up with examples of folk medicine or food ideas. Once I broadened the scope of my interview though he recalled this story about how his mother would always make him lemon water whenever he had any symptoms pertaining to his stomach. This was my first time hearing about it, but he seemed confident one of his mom’s friends told her to do that to help with the nausea associated with her chemo treatments when she was battling ovarian cancer. The advice worked for her but not AG, but out of consideration for his mom he just went along with it.

Analysis: While there is evidence for the citric acid in lemons to aid with indigestion, there is not evidence to say it will aid or cure a stomach ache or nausea associated with other ailments. It is in no way a cure all for stomach discomfort as it believed by AG’s mother. I think the explanation likely lies in the fact that AG’s mother was likely desperate for relief and when she was offered it by her friend there was a sort of placebo effect that allowed her to feel better from her upset stomach. From my interview it was clear that the lemon water trick never worked for AG when his stomach hurt which aligns more with what science would suggest. I think it is very interesting how AG still went along with his mothers advice and attempt to cure him with the lemon water, there is also little risk to doing this so he did it just to be considerate of his moms feelings and also likely allowed her to continue using the placebo to treat stomach issues of her own.