A spicy Mother’s Day tale filled with not-so-hot Thai food and rodeo bull riding

My Number 2 Son (birth order, not quality of life) treated me to lunch at a delightful Thai restaurant in Olympia last week. We enjoyed reminiscing about our years in Thailand.

In honor of those years, Number 2 had ordered a four-star-hot Thai dish, but when the Pad Thai arrived, it was still not hot enough for his palate.

He asked for pepper sauce and the server, clearly offended, said very firmly, “No pepper sauce because we are south of Seattle, and only people north of Seattle eat hot food.” Now that is information you don’t get just everywhere. We didn’t get the pepper sauce.

Things often don’t work out as we expect. For instance, with Mothers Day on the way, I can’t help remembering that Anna Jarvis, the founder of Mother’s Day, was bitterly disappointed at the way it was commercialized.

I imagine you are shaking your head in a rather puzzled way and saying, “And how is this related to pepper sauce?” Well, it isn’t yet, but hang on. We’ll get there.

Jarvis’ original observance has become a huge commercial event. She envisioned a simple celebration.

I’ve got to admit that those original Mother’s Day Cards and stories created for my first Mother’s Days were unforgettable. I still have the impassioned poetry of my First Kid’s handmade card: “Where would I be without my mother? Out in the cold with no hot soup. That’s where.” Eat your heart out, Hallmark.

This year that same First Kid, grown up and a health care professional, is coming for Mother’s Day with a collection of nearby siblings. First Kid does not eat peppers.

It’s always been important to get home for Mother’s Day, and that was one of the things Jarvis really wanted, along with those crayoned homemade cards: visits. But even a simple visit doesn’t always go well.

I remember visiting my Grandmother in Oregon. We sat on the tiny back porch waiting for her youngest son to come home. That would have been my Uncle Lou.

My Uncle Lou hadn’t come home from the rodeo where he performed as a trick bull rider. Word had gotten out that he had been injured. My Grandma took to sitting in her room and crying.

Rodeos were really big in Oregon — even today there are two dozen rodeos a year. But he should have been home by now. I was about 16 and suffering from my usual battle with poison oak. It would be my last summer visit to my Grandma’s ranch.

We waited for Lou to come home. His special event was Brahma Bull riding. A bucking bull is usually a Brahman crossed with another breed, weighing 1,500 pounds or more, selected for their tendency to “leap, plunge and spin” when a human is on its back.

Grandma brought her children from Sicily in 1906. She never learned to speak English, but she didn’t know that. Uncle Lou attributed his rodeo success to a steady diet of hot peppers taken in steadily since swallowing them with his mother’s milk. (See, there are the peppers, and it’s certainly south of Seattle.)

Are Brahma bulls still used in rodeos? Yep, they are.

“Bull riding is dangerous and predictably exciting, demanding intense physical prowess, supreme mental toughness and courage,” says a rodeo brochure.

We were sitting in the backyard when Lou’s truck finally rolled in.

”Luigi! Luigi! My son,” Grandma called, her glad cries turning to screams when she realized that her youngest son was encased in a full body cast. He couldn’t walk. He just sort of rolled across the field.

My Uncle’s rodeo days were over. But he continued eating peppers and thus encouraged ran for the office of sheriff and won. He served two terms as The Singing Sheriff of Multnomah County.

And what is the point of this fable? It’s almost Mother’s Day. Be sure to visit your mother. Make her a pepper wreath for the front door. Mothers like things like that. If she doesn’t, she’ll tell you and you can put it on your front door. Happy Mother’s Day.

Where to find Dorothy in May

May 3 and 5: Catch “Twentiana,” the best of the tunes of the 1920s, performed by the Panorama Chorus and directed by Troy Arnold Fisher, at 3 p.m. Saturday or 7 p.m. Monday in the Panorama Auditorium, 1670 Circle Loop SE, Lacey

May 5: Coffee Chat and Change the World videocast, 9 a.m. Monday.

Swimming Upstream radio show at itsnevertoolate.com or wherever you find your favorite podcast. New show every Monday