Giving Back

My mom sacrificed her dreams because “women weren’t supposed to…” She had nothing more than a high school diploma. But she was amazing.

My parents divorced when I was seven years old. My father was terribly abusive but my mother found the courage to stand up to him and to walk away. When I was in fourth grade, she left California to get away from him and moved to a little Colorado ski town. My (much younger) brother and I joined her shortly before I started fifth grade. That year, she got a job as a receptionist at a start-up industrial company making $2.75 per hour. She got the job because she was the only candidate who didn’t freak out when the men flipped up her mini-skirt to look at her ass. This was 1974. Sexual harassment wasn’t a concept. The four men who founded the company, like her, had nothing more than a high school diploma. And they were typical good old boys.

The company became the number-one-ranked international industrial company. Haliburton—yes, that Haliburton, while Dick Cheney was still with the company—subcontracted for my mom’s company.

She worked her way up from being a receptionist to being a vice president and major stockholder, she was on the Board of Directors, and she was responsible for travelling to, setting up, and training employees for every international jobsite the company had. She was entirely self-taught. She knew domestic and international tax and labor law inside out. She fired more people with accounting degrees than she kept because they “knew the theory but couldn’t do the actual work of accounting.”

I was the company’s Payroll Administrator for several years until I left to pursue a college education.

My mom encouraged me to follow my heart, to follow my passion. She sacrificed her dreams to do the “right” thing but encouraged me not to follow in her footsteps.

My mom’s hard work paid off. She spent thirty years traveling the world, both for work and for pleasure. She visited every continent, including Antarctica. Antarctica was her favorite. She had photos of the penguins walking right up to her feet. She liked traveling to places off the beaten path. She loved wildlife and nature. People? Not so much.

I’m the opposite of my mom. I have a B.A. in Theatre & Dance, a M.A. in Communication, and a Ph.D. in Speech Communication. I love people. I love people-watching. I love traveling to major urban centers around the world and learning about the people and the culture.

I sacrificed my dream, though. My son was born the first day of my final undergraduate semester. His father had walked away when I was five months pregnant, so I was a single mom. I quickly learned how expensive kids are. Although I had been accepted to USC Graduate Film School and the American Film Institute, I made the decision to walk away from my dream of a Broadway and film career in order to provide a quality of life for my son. I didn’t think living the life of a starving artist while trying to raise a child was a good choice. I also gave up dancing. I had performed in dance theatre for twelve years. It was my passion. But it wasn’t possible as a single mother. Rehearsals were simply too time-consuming and I couldn’t afford the childcare. So I became a college professor.

College teaching fulfilled part of my dream. I was still the center of attention. Teaching is a form of acting that requires talent to keep students engaged and interested. The bonus was that I was not only allowed but expected to be smart and was celebrated for it instead of being bullied for being smart like I was all through my childhood. But it wasn’t the same.

I have only ever seen two Broadway productions. I sobbed both times because I felt this hole inside me knowing that my dream was to be up there on that stage.

My mother was hospitalized in early February 2020. We didn’t know about COVID-19 yet, but if that’s what she had, I don’t think she would have been discharged from the hospital. They tested her for Influenza A and B and she tested negative. She had been living with emphysema and COPD for many years and had been on oxygen since 2006. I moved to Southern California in 2016 to care for her, leaving my then-fiancé and step-daughter behind.

When she was discharged from the hospital, my mother was placed in home hospice. The blessing of the pandemic was that I was able to keep my job while staying home and caring for her 24/7 because all teaching moved online. Caring for my mother who had always cared for me was difficult. But I’m thankful I was able to give back to her a bit of what she gave me throughout my life: unconditional love, friendship, and a willingness to sacrifice my dreams in order to give her a bit of happiness.

My other died on June 12, 2020. I was unable to move back to New York City, though, because of the pandemic. I lost my teaching position in August 2020 and have been unemployed since, despite applying for hundreds of jobs.

I returned to New York City and my husband and step-daughter (we married in 2018) mid-May, 2021. As I was going through everything and boxing up stuff to donate, keep, or discard, I came across a box my mother had made for me. She never told me about it. The box was labeled, “Memories for Lisa.” It is filled with all the photographs from my childhood, awards and accomplishments, and other items I never knew she kept.

I couldn’t hold my emotions in. My mother sacrificed her dreams for me but in the end, she lived her dreams through me.

My mother taught me to pursue my dreams, to never give up, to never sacrifice myself and my dreams for anyone or anything. But what she really taught me was that family and love supersede everything. What we do and what we have don’t really matter. What matters is who we have in our lives. I’m blessed to have been able to give her the love she so freely gave me so that she didn’t die alone and so that she knew she mattered.