To make up for the years of relentless, curious questioning I’ve bombarded my Ma with about her carpet bag and wrap-skirt-clad days—all brokenly recalled in a way only someone who experienced them in a stoned, hippie stupor can—I thought I’d write a tribute for my dear, cherished Ma on Mother’s Day.

Alas, I’m such a terrible daughter that my tribute comes a week late. It’s likely due to my own stupor from last weekend—but this, I know, my Ma understands. Like only a real hippie Ma can. Go figure. I am my mother’s daughter, after all. But maybe if I tell your stories, Ma, even just a couple, it’ll redeem me a bit. It’s the least I can do. Considering what they’ve meant to me.

My fascination with your life, Ma, started a few years ago. When we kids pulled out your old guitar and thought it sounded like magic. Like it had been touched by greats. We knew it. We made up stories to justify its status—that it had been plucked by Jimmy Page, that Pete Townshend had left it behind after The Who’s first show here in ’67, when they were small-time and opened for Herman’s Hermits—one of his practice guitars, maybe? We know you and Auntie Z. were at that house party with them that August night. She remembers. 

This same guitar that’s taken on a tall-tale life of its own is now propped in the corner of my kitchen, the black paper on the case torn and cracked. When friends come over they gravitate toward it, swooning over its thick sound. I cautiously allow the ones I trust to play it, reminding them it’s an heirloom that my sister and brother and I will surely fight over one day. Even though none of us even play guitar. 

I open the case and smell it once in a while, thinking of where it’s been. Across Europe and back: seven years hitchhiking, when travel was adventure and not just Eurotrip-style clubhopping, when the world was dangerous in a more romantic way. You tell me about the drop dead gorgeous Italian film star who gave you and your friend a ride in his teeny sport convertible, backpacks jostled awkwardly in the back. He drove you around Rome, saving your passportless selves from the polizia with his celebrity wiles. You even met his mother. He dropped you off around the corner from his soundstage before he was accosted by a flurry of young girls. You still can’t say exactly who he was. “Gianni Macchia? Something like that.” 

Dammit, Ma. You really should have been taking better notes. How the hell am I supposed to write a tell-all bio with just a coffee tin full of ticket stubs and crackled newspaper clippings showing photos of your boomer crew protesting in front of the old Bay building on Jasper—all of it dusted with decades-old weed crumbs? Hypnosis, perhaps, would help your recall?

We find a brittle chunk of Keith Moon’s drumskin in this rusting tin. But the skin is from The Who’s ’67 show, you say, not from their second stint here in ’68 when they came to headline the Edmonton Gardens. This time, the band had just got an advance pressing of the new Beatles LP—The White Album, really?—but had no turntable in their hotel. It was Sunday and shops were closed. You, who had tagged along with a reporter friend, said, “Well, I have a turntable.”

You tell me you’d never forget the look on your out-of-the-shower, turban-toweled roommate’s face when you walked into your apartment near King Eddy’s School followed by Moon, John Entwistle, and a roadie, snapped up your wood-panelled turntable, and walked right back out again—grinning from ear to ear. The rest were waiting at the hotel—what was then the Kingsway Motor Inn—and while the record spun, you and Moon zoomed remote control cars up and down the hallway, the entire floor to yourselves, booked out by the band and crew. 

It was a shame to have that Philips turntable collecting dust in the rafters of the garage, Ma, and I know you felt a little leery about letting me borrowing it, along with Songs From Big Pink and Pearl, but I can assure you that my dear friends—who know and love you just as well from their days crashing on your basement floor—are just as careful with the vinyl as they should be. We’ve been listening to The Doors on repeat, watching the needle slide over and rest in its cradle before pushing START once again, saying stupid hipster things like “Listen to that crackle.”

I think of how I’ve snapped up the spoils of your adventures. (Really, I do take meticulous care of those killer blue knee-high boots you got in London when you were 17.) And even though I’ve now outed your hippie days to the world, I know you’d do it all over again. 

You say, “in a heartbeat.” 

Thanks, Ma. For the stories. I’m never short of them now.