A call to arms...

Mammam est spectaculi sensus fashion!

As we approach our SIXTH month of social distancing and muffled by masks conversations, Husband and Cookie are running out of things to discuss that don't descend into how much alike feel about the current President and Administration in Washington.   Politics aside, our evening conversations consist of how expensive groceries have become, 400 channels and nothing to watch, or sneezes and coughs brought on by the allergy season.

The other night however we charted unknown territories.   All y'all - and yes you can put an "all before "y'all" and grasp a larger group of inclusion - know that when you are an old married couple like this, unchartered territories of conversations are for marriage encounter groups, marriage counseling sessions or for new acquaintances that one can make. Since none of that is going on, these new topics are a bit like sailing to the end of the world and then dropping off the edge, so one treads carefully.

And all y'all know that Cookie is a genealogist, and my husband caught the tombstone twitch from me.   So the topic came up that if we would create our own "Coat of Arms" what would the family look like, and what would the motto be. 

While we haven't finalized a design, which so far includes a fish, a chicken, and a platypus, the motto is also a work in progress. My mother's family is lousy with family mottos - remember, my grandmother was That Woman's fourth cousin, twice removed.  The motto has to be something that says something about goals, lofty ideals, or just something that the family is known for.  Like Bill's Knapp's Family probably has something that roughly translates to "Famous for fine food," or the like.

And it has to say it in Latin.  Why? Because.

Since the husband and I are of the simple folk, neither of us knows Latin.  What I remember about Latin is that you have to keep it simple or you can easily create something completely unwieldy or something that takes twenty words to say something that was created in English using five words.

Our top competitors include:

1) Since my mother in law loved lots and lots of butter with her "lobstah", was known to call out "Buttah, wheres my buttah!" while were melting her third stick of Land-O-Lakes.  That pharse converts to roughly "Butyrum: butyrum ubi est?"

2) Then there was the bad milk in the plastic jug that was two weeks out of date and had separated like Kim Bassinger and Alec Baldwin, Mom' well into her eighties said it was fine and to "Just Shake It Up!" which becomes roughly "Vastata est lac, agitabit ante bibens!"

3) From my family comes "Who left the bathroom light on?" which is a bit less esoteric, but more universal, and the rolls off of your tongue with Qui relicto in balneo lux?

Of course, no one will ever say such things aloud, but any would look swell embossed upon a golden banner underneath the large shield, adorned with a fish, fowl, and platypus rampant upon a field of azure, whilst argent lions pose in a noble stance on either side of the scene playing out on the Cookie Family Arms.

What about you?  What would your family motto be?