And I, Like Her

The cool air of the pre-sunrise morning. I’d forgotten what it was like, how sweet and crisp it felt. I’ve been up with the sunrise here in Houston, but never outside for it. This air is where I truly thrive, the calm before the rest of the world wakes up. As cool as it is, this is still May in Houston, TX. I can smell the humidity and coming heat.

I suppose what I am smelling with that is the bacteria, the remnants of the Galveston sea air. I miss my morning walks I used to take in Nashville. This air most reminds me of the mountains, a very specific memory. Walking out onto the porch of a rental cabin to see the foggy overlook into the waves of rock and tree, my mom already sitting in a rocking chair, sipping her first cup of coffee. That was the first time I ever tried coffee. I still hated it back then.

It is such a vivid memory. I can recall her purple, mismatch hoodie, her grey sweats, her old, leather slippers, how she just learned her hair gets perfectly wavy when it’s shoulder length. I can feel how silky soft it is and how fresh it smells, which brings me to her smile. I miss my mother dearly.

She’s the reason for a lot of good things in my life. Her hugs are the reason I became such a good hugger, having grown up with hers that you just sink into. The many back scratches and neck rubs she would give me led me to understand love through physical affection. She led me to understand love in general. All that she was and did taught me how to love and be loved.

That’s what the crisp morning air means to me.

She is my mother, a woman whose response when, as a pre-teen, I called a VW Beetle “gay” because I didn’t like it for not being ‘cool enough,’ was to shut me down with a quick and stern, “Don’t you dare say that.” She said that to the boy who ten-ish years later finally identifies as queer. Her truly unconditional support and love helped me accept that.

Growing up as a boy who was in fact attracted to girls, I was prime candidate number one ‘they’ wanted to become the next Commander in our very own Handmaid’s Tale.

Without my mother so fierce and true a feminist, who didn’t care about the norms of others, I just might’ve become a Commander. Instead, I too became a feminist. Instead of buying into my consumerist, misogynist comrades, I see people as a person first and foremost. It's a much better way to live.

In adolescents, she told me not to make it all about sex, while the rest of life around me seemed to want me to. She taught me not to push my sexuality on people, not making it an annoyance, as it always was to her. This came with it’s ups and downs, having me hide it and stifle it for a while, leaving me to figure it all out on my own, never really having the ‘sex talk,’ but in general, I believe it was for the best.

She taught me notions of consent and common sense. Which is in fact something that needs to be taught, as society seems to want growing boys to overlook them.

Growing up with a father who was there yet never present, my mother was really the reason I held onto that softer, deeper, more true part of myself.

She was a child who crossed the picket lines of neighbors who screamed slurs and carried signs so she could attend school alone with the one black girl who had been sent into their district in Memphis, Tennessee in the 1970s.

She was a growing adolescent who's cousin joined the family, having to flee domestic violence.

She was a young lady who didn’t wear make up when she went to prom, who stopped shaving her legs having gone to Germany, who watched her own mother be an activist in civil rights and all local issues in Muscogee, Oklahoma.

She went to Washington University to study business economics and verily corrected everyone back home when they asked if she was studying home ec.

She was a college student who lost her mother.

She was a recent college graduate whose new in-laws asked when they’ll hear the pitter patter of little feet? And her response was, “We already have two cats.”

She was a mother who put down her career, despite being the one making more money, because those in-laws could not stand the idea of their son being a stay-at-home parent, because that was the woman’s position.

She was a mother.

She was a mother.

Shew will always be a mother.

Who raised two boys. Who fed us. Clothed us. Loved us.

She is a woman who has always been able to laugh and smile, yet who doesn’t shy away from her tears.

She is a woman who loves art and has raised an artist.

A woman who let her boys become who they were, letting us make our own mistakes, while still somehow fighting so hard to keep all our outside influences in check. Sometimes she was more successful than others. Without seeing all that she did and was, how could I have began to become one who does the same?

You have to teach children that the world is not always nice and kind.

She was nothing but supportive.

She was a wife who was cheated on.

Who cried and hid her frailty and demons from her sons. One left for college, while in her depression I was there, living with her still. In her darkness I relearned how to love. How to care. How to hug. Because of all that she had shown to me. Unknowingly, it had taught me who to grow up to be.

You have to reteach children that the world is not always harsh and cruel.

Seven years later, in speaking on her depression over the phone while I was on a rooftop in Los Angeles, it helped me accept my own. In speaking on her journey, it helped me start mine. Nothing ever changed my mind about therapy. Not the words of family, or friends, or lovers. Nothing but my mother telling me only a sliver of what she had been through with hers.

She was a woman who stopped censoring herself when her boys ‘grew up.’

She always made time for us. My brother and I were always first. She cancelled plans, took off of work she had been able to get again, whenever we were available or in town. Her home has always, always been open, yet never pulling or demanding us in.

She is woman who has lost a lot of her friends, but could always make new ones. Sometimes it being harder than others.

She is a woman who loves to read, to cook, to live, joke, and smile.

If you know me, it makes a lot of sense that this is the woman who raised me. I wouldn’t be here, as I am, without her. At the beginning as well as along my way.

This woman, she is my mother.