Uncle John’s Presents Mom’s Bathtub Reader Read Online Free PDF Page B

husband.
    __ D. All of the above
    __ E. None of the above.
    4. The Play: Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare, 1587
    The Plot: Tamora, queen of the Goths, has been taken prisoner by Roman general Titus Andronicus, along with three of her sons and her lover, Aaron. Once in Rome, Titus has Tamora’s eldest son sacrificed to avenge the deaths of some of his own sons during the bloody war against the Goths.
    What’s a mom to do?
    __ A. Trick Titus’s surviving sons into falling into a pit and be blamed for the murder of the emperor’s brother.
    __ B. Have your lover trick Titus into chopping off his own hand.
    __ C. Arrange for the heads of Titus’s sons to be brought to him on a platter, along with his own hand.
    __ D. Enjoy the pastry served at a party hosted by Titus.
    __ E. All of the above.
    Answers on page 299 .

Mom’s Got You Under Her Skin
    Feel like mom’s always getting under your skin? That’s because she never left!
    T homas Wolfe once wrote that you can’t go home again. Well, it turns out that it might be just as tough to leave home and mom too. It’s true—at least on a cellular level.
CELL MATES
    Even if you’re all grown up, you can still have blood and tissue cells that you picked up during your time in the womb. Meanwhile, there’s a good chance that mom can’t part with parts of you either. Decades after a woman gives birth, she can still have cells in her body that came from the babies she carried during her pregnancies. The cells are actually descendants of stem cells that have transplanted themselves, taken root, and begun reproducing in both mom and baby.
    In fact, women who’ve had sons have been known to have male cells in their bloodstream for up to 27 years. A woman who has been pregnant can have both her mother’s cells and her kids’ cells floating around—no wonder moms sometimes say they have trouble keeping their own identity straight.
HAS MOM INVADED YOUR INNER SPACE?
    This foreign-cell phenomenon is called microchimerism. Foreign cells are few (up to 61 fetal blood cells per tablespoon of blood translates to less than one in a million). Medical researchers using genetic tools to identify foreign cells believe they are a common phenomenon in both sick and healthy people.
    The impact of mom’s cells staying in your body is still a mystery. While there’s evidence that foreign cells might encourage autoimmune diseases (where the body mistakenly attacks its own tissues), some scientists believe that a mom’s cells will be shown to benefit her offspring. The jury is still out.
    Meanwhile, if you feel an inexplicable urge to wear clean underwear or close the door because you weren’t born in the barn . . . you know the reason. Seems there’s a bit of mom in all of us.
    “Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one’s own Trojan horse.” —Rebecca West
    “And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see—or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.”
—Alice Walker

Mom Makes the World Go ’Round
    In the ancient world, mom could explain the mysteries of life.
    W e all know motherhood is a powerful thing. But did you know it could make the seasons change, bring stormy weather, and turn night to day?
THE MOTHER OF ALL WINTERS
    For a time, the earth knew no winter. It was always warm, always sunny, and always growing season! People owed this eternal summer to the Greek goddess Demeter, who was in charge of agriculture and vegetation. Demeter had a beautiful daughter, Persephone, who was the apple of her mom’s eye.
    But everything changed when Hades, god of the underworld, noticed Persephone and realized she was a total babe. He doubted that mom would consent to let her daughter marry him and live underground to preside with him over the souls of the dead. So when Persephone was out picking flowers, Hades split open the earth below