Now, folks. I’m going to tell you something that might be a little bit hard for you to grasp. But don’t worry. I’ll take it slow and stop for questions along the way.
Ready? Ok.
I was somewhat of a…shall we say…difficult child.
Shocking, I know.
Among my mom’s friends, I was known as “Miss Priss.” I had an imaginary friend named Bingo that creeped everyone out.
I would sit for hours at the dinner table, refusing to eat that last bite of chicken or green beans or some other seemingly noxious food item.
I punched my sister in the stomach and denied the whole thing, insisting that I just “put my hand on her and applied force.”
My mom didn’t bat an eye when I wanted a pet mouse instead of a hamster, or when my Beanie Babies staged The Phantom of the Opera, or when I would only call her Sue-Gon during a brief period of intense Star Wars obsession, or when I screamed at her over my math homework or refused to let her teach me how to drive because I said she stressed me out too much.
Despite all the crazy stuff I put her through, I always loved her–she’s my mom. She’s a friend, confidante, advice-giver, consumer advocate, cat whisperer, Ikea furniture assembler, soap-watching, event planning, disco-dancing diva.
I may not have inherited her ability to sing or dance (or even, let’s be real here, her boobs). But she did teach me tolerance and acceptance. She taught me to treat others with respect. How to work a room. How to make a production book. How to stand up for myself. And she pushed me to follow my dreams–whatever they were at the time.
But I think one of the greatest gifts she ever gave me was the courage to move away.
I was cleaning out my closet last night, and I found the card she gave me on the day I started Orientation at Barnard–nearly five years ago. On the front is a picture of the Imagine mosaic in Central Park, and inside, she writes:
Today begins a new adventure. Know that I am always with you and you are always with me in my heart. I am so very proud of you and know that you will take New York by storm! You are an incredible young woman–full of life and someone everyone feels glad to be around. You are my joy and I love you.
Five years ago, when I was choosing where to go for college, it was down to Miami or Barnard. I had almost a full-ride scholarship to Miami. It was driving distance from Orlando. Barnard would require us to take out a loan and would mean being 1,000 miles from home. My mom never pressured me one way or the other. I think she knew I would pick New York before I did, and that even though it would mean losing me, her support never waivered. She wanted me to go.
There have been times when I doubted my choice, but looking back, I’d do it all over again, exactly the same way. And I think being apart actually brought us closer.
But she was wrong. When I moved to New York, I was still a child. It was coming here, exploring the city, traveling the world, graduating college, getting a job, that made me into the young woman she always hoped I would be.
On this Mother’s Day, I want to say thank you to my mom (and all of the moms in my life) for the strength to grow up. I couldn’t have done it without you.
And for every great mom I know, I feel like there’s another one who I never got the chance to meet. But if there’s any comfort to be had amidst that sadness, it’s in the joy that I have had a chance to see a little bit of them in the impression their love made on the ones they left behind. There’s no way I could ever even come close to understanding what it might be like to lose a parent, but I do want to share these thoughts from a truly touching article I read by a woman who’d lost her mother giving advice to a man whose fiancee’s mother had also passed away.
It will never be okay that she lost her mother. And the kindest most loving thing you can do for her is to bear witness to that, to muster the strength and courage and humility it takes to accept the enormous reality of its not okayness and be okay with it the same way she has to be. Get comfortable being the [one] who says oh honey, I’m so sorry for your loss over and over again.
That’s what the people who’ve consoled me the most deeply in my sorrow have done. They’ve spoken those words or something like them every time I needed to hear it; they’ve plainly acknowledged what is invisible to them, but so very real to me. I know saying those cliché and ordinary things makes you feel squirmy and lame. I feel that way too when I say such things to others who have lost someone they loved. We all do. It feels lame because we like to think we can solve things. It feels insufficient because there is nothing we can actually do to change what’s horribly true.
But compassion isn’t about solutions. It’s about giving all the love that you’ve got.
That’s what I want to do for my mom and for everyone else I know missing their mother today–give them all the love that I’ve got.
Happy Mother’s Day. I love you.
Pride & Prejudice & Brooklyn 