Moms say the darndest things! Postcards from yo momma

No matter how old you get, your mom is still your mom.

Correspondence from her likely includes advice-giving, nurturing, support, updates on others' lives, minutia from hers, or questions that range from slang and how to use the computer to details about your health or sex life.

Read a letter from a mom, and you just know it's from a mom, even if it isn't signed Mom, Mommy, Mum or Ma.

Recently, I've become hooked on a Web site called Postcards From Yo Momma, A repository of modern day maternal correspondence, at www.postcardsfromyomomma. com. On it, people post correspondence from their mothers — usually e-mails or text messages.

They're delightful, touching, moving, and damn hilarious. And reproduced as originally written, creative spellings and all.

I mean, who else but a mom would send an e-mail that ends, "By the way, if you are gay, no problems for me as long as you have kids."

There's the e-mail from the mom who informed her daughter that she bought her baby clothes, even though she isn't pregnant. (The mom hoped it would have some kind of positive influence.) Then there's the mom who spoke right to the point. The subject line said "hi," and the e-mail was just one line: "I want grandchildren!"

One mom, who'd watched "Saturday Night Live," didn't know what a MILF was. Another told her daughter she'd look like a "whochimama" in a dress she wanted to buy. The daughter then explained what a hoochie mama was. (The mom thought it just meant looking hot and sexy.)

But then a recent post had this e-mail from a mom:

"Tyra says the average woman has eight sexual partners in a lifetime…. Yo mamas a ho!"

(Readers then had a big debate as to whether the number was high or low. One suggested it was low, but thought that celibate nuns skewed the average.)

Even when the notes are cryptic or sound strange, they still sound Mom-like:

"When you get a chance, ask your dad about how he almost killed Al Gore. It's a good story. - Mom"

Or this:

"Hi Darling. Michael Phelps shaves his pits."

One wrote her daughter, saying she was locked in the computer room and couldn't get out. "I NEED HELP AND

SOON, BEFORE I STARVE TO DEATH!!!!" the mother wrote.

The explanation: "I was trying to put a door knob on the door and got started, but the thing went completely closed as I was trying to see if it was going to fit — and now here I am having to stoop so low as to write an email to you to see if you could call someone to come get me out."

Some moms give details of their daily life, though some are more colorful than others.

One relays a dream she had about Madonna. And yes, it was typed all in caps: "I HAD THE STRANGEST DREAM LAST NIGHT, I DREAMED I WAS IN EUROPE AT A SPA WITH MADONNA AND WE WERE HANGING OUT LIKE WE WERE BFF'S. ANYWAY BEFORE YOU COULD GO THROUGH THE SPA YOU HAD TO HAVE ALL YOUR BODY HAIR REMOVED BY THESE LITTLE BOYS. SO I WASN'T HAVING ANY OF IT. IT WAS SO WEIRD. AND THESE PEOPLE DIDN'T SEEM TO KNOW WHO MADONNA WAS SO WE STARTED SINGING 'LIKE A VIRGIN.' AND THEN MY ALARM WENT OFF."

And some are very clever:

"On May 1 a check was born. Alas, like an unbaptized soul in Limbo, it has not reached check heaven. Check heaven is a place of great joy for birthday checks because there it can reach its full potential. No longer folded upon itself, ashamed to show its worth; it is free to pay bills, pay down debt, buy things you need or even to swell the balance of your checking or savings account. It could even be earning interest! Don't let it suffer any longer. Free the little birthday check."

One reader wrote in and said: "Mom, is that you? I think my Mom has a secret family she hasn't told me about. Now I know what she's doing when she's not jerking my chain."

Another clever one was this: "We have been in the woods almost every weekend working on the camp. Murdering trees, shredding the evidence, splitting murdered trees, stacking split murdered trees, burning murdered trees. Generally the whole tree murdering cycle.

"And drinking at the bar."

One peppers her e-mail with current slang, then reveals she learned them all from the AARP magazine. Another doesn't quite get the lingo, asking her daughter if she's "cooling with her friends" instead of chilling with her friends.

Nothing is off limits. Moms write about discovering Kanye West's music, sleeping on the couch, and dad's vasectomy.

Some even seem to have more exciting social lives. One mom wrote her daughter that she was currently "Out at a club dancing 2 back that ass up."

And for those who want to grow old and feisty, but harbor an intense dislike for red hats, here's one prize one:

"Friday I'm doing something fun as well. Joan and I are starting a club called The Grown-Ass Woman's Club. Our mascot is Gert Boyle (One Tough Mother) from Columbia Wear. Your stepfather is making fun of us but I think he's just petty and jealous. I finally told him to shut up. That's what GAW do when they are confronted with negativity. One of our field trips is going to be on a Saturday and we're going to find those Red Hat Ladies and shove them down. They're ridiculous and need to be eliminated."

The site was started by two women who, as friends, shared their moms' e-mails with each other. Jessica Grose is an editor for Double X , a blog for women that is on Slate, the online magazine. Doree Shafrir is a senior editor at The New York Observer.

Since its inception in March 2008, the site's received more than 7,000 e-mails. The best have been compiled into a book: "Love, Mom: Poignant, Goofy, Brilliant Messages from Home."

New York magazine, in its Approval Matrix, rated them "brilliant but lowbrow."

So check out the book, and check out the site.

And don't forget to write your mom. You never know what she might write back.