To Moms and Other Moms
And mothering dads and those who wish to be moms and those who don't want to be moms and aunts and older female cousins and.....
Mother’s Day 2025 is over now. I flew to California earlier this month to spend some time with my 90-year-old mother and my two sisters and their families. Both of my sisters are moms of two, and one is a grandmother to four offspring from her two daughters. There are lots of women in my family who are moms, and they’re all good ones, in spite of all the challenges they face especially as their offspring become adults.
I’m the oldest of three. My youngest sister lives just a couple of miles from our mother, who lives in a facility with assisted and independent living apartments. Mom is still mostly independent, so she doesn’t need the extra care (and associated cost) of living in the assisted side of the place. My sister visits Mom a couple times a week, and I video-call Mom twice a week as well, and then fly out to visit for Mother’s Day in May, her birthday in September, and in January because it’s inbetween the other two trips.
My other sister lives about 45 minutes away from Mom. She rarely calls, but she’ll always come if she is needed (like when the younger sister was on vacation). I drove Mom down to see the other sister and her husband this week. It was a good visit; as warm and loving as you could imagine. Mom still thinks that this sister doesn’t really care for Mom very much. We can’t make her call Mom, or even text. She is who she is.
I stay with the sister who lives nearest to Mom because it’s the most convenient. Now that she’s retired, she even lets me use her car to save on the car rental. It’s always a nice visit with Sis, and we get along really well. One of her two kids still lives at home with a partner - so it’s a bit crowded but we make it work.
What’s most challenging about these visits is that neither Mom nor I are very good at conversation. As introverts, we’re really good at staring at walls, but not so much at uttering actual words. So we watch movies. A lot of movies. What is becoming more evident is that Mom is having a harder and harder time figuring out what’s happening in the stories we watch on TV. In some cases, it’s not that abnormal. Newer filmmaking styles often blur lines between past and present, making it difficult to recognize that the younger character in the previous scene is now 40 years older in the next one. But we make it work, most of the time, with Mom asking questions and me trying to answer them while the movie continues to play. We are both thankful for Netflix, Prime Video, and the other streaming services that she has become quite devoted to.
Mom and I had some challenges over the years. She was very distraught when I came out to my parents back in 1979. Times were different then, and the life Mom had envisioned for me evaporated into a cloud of vapor. Little did she know then what a great life I would go on to have, meeting my now husband and finding a logical family that is every bit as rich and rewarding as a biological one would have been. She went on to meet some other gay people (including the pastor of the church she and my dad attended in the early 80s) that showed her that we could be loved, cherished, and appreciated for who we were. She became an ardent PFLAG-Mom1 and a great mother-in-law to my hubby.
I know that, for some gay people, parental relationships are irrevocably destroyed when they come out. Many are kicked out of their homes. Other LGBTQ youth endure emotional and verbal abuse well into adulthood, causing some of them to sever their family relationships to preserve their own mental health. I’m grateful that I never had to deal with that, but I have deep empathy for anyone who suffered at the hands of less-than-loving parents. I believe there is a special play in hell for any parent who rejects their child because they are anywhere in the LGBTQ rainbow.
It is my great fortune to have a loving mom who still smiles when I walk through her door, who beams as she introduces me to her friends at the senior center, and who hugs me tightly when I have to say goodbye until the next time. She’s my angel and worry warrior, but she’s always in my corner.
