Mother

Many years ago, people told my mother not to have me. But she insisted (her choice) and welcomed me into the world two weeks after I was due. None of it would be easy for her.

She didn’t know, for instance, at the age of 22, what it would be like raising a mixed-race kid as a single parent, having to fend off continued implorations to give me away. And then there was me. I had a bit of an attitude problem, feeling often that I should get what I wanted. It was quite simple, really, and I didn’t understand why she couldn’t see it the way I did. Such suffering I had to contend with as a two year old. Get thee to preschool, she said then, and off I went, shy as hell and clinging to her polyester pant leg.

It can’t have been easy fending off my persistence. “Just let me have one more,” I’d say, wide-eyed with my pointer finger between us for emphasis. I’d follow my pleads politician-like: “I promise I will be good.” She knew better most times. And most times I flashed my smile and there was no getting around it.

My mother has struggled with her own demons – from practically the beginning of my life through to now: alcoholism (sober for 15 years); epilepsy; a stroke when I wasn’t yet in high school and resulting paralysis from which she would recover. One health issue after another, all while trying to raise me.

I had questions she didn’t know how to answer, but she tried the best she could. And I presented her with other challenges that confounded her, such as my hair. It grew and grew into a thick mass of cotton-ball-like madness, and it didn’t come with an instruction book. (Class photos from 2nd to 8th grade can attest to this. After that it was my fault.) And she made me wear dresses. Perhaps to get back at me.

But through it all, she showed me love. She put me into sports before I could add, and gave me paper and a pencil. There were the Dodger’s. M&M’s on New Year’s Eve as the crackers fired to Dick Clark. A train ride to visit the grandparents in Texas. And that time she called me back home when I was halfway to the bus stop when I was eight, so I didn’t have to go to school (shhh).

That’s my mom.

I also have a Tan, that name a bastardized form of Aunt Ann. Though not related by blood to neither my mom nor me, she gave of herself to see me through, perhaps at the detriment of her own family. The reason wasn’t my smile, which I’d prefer to believe, but rather the size of her heart, crazy though it might have been.

She missed some of my early years in order to get her own family started, but she returned, quickly managing with a frustrating-to-me sense of ease to say no a hell of a lot more (and louder) than my mom did.

She worked her ass off for reasons that I’ll probably never know to help keep my mom and me going. She was there when my mom went into the hospital for weeks at a time and all the while made sure I was at school with my homework done and food in my belly. All with not much money to go around.

She didn’t have to do any of it; sometimes I wonder why and wish I could give it all back to her. But she’s never asked for that.

That’s Tan.

Without one I wouldn’t have been born; without the other, I wouldn’t have survived.

I love you both. Happy Mother’s Day.