I met my stepmom when I was 5. A hard, unnecessary slap to my face rocked my world, and, of course, our relationship.
By twelve, I was no longer physically afraid of her, and by seventeen I had joined the Air Force, in large part to sever her influence into my world.
I remained close to my dad, which necessitated interaction with her. I was civil, but maintained an emotional distance. We got along.
It wasn't until thirty that I began to understand the relationship.
"Jeff, why are you here?"
"Well, I keep wanting THIS in relationships, and I keep getting something else. I've tried everything I know. And I keep getting that something else."
"Tell me about your parents, Jeff."
"Oh, I'm close to my dad, but never got along with my mom. But it's water under the bridge. It was long ago. I'm over it."
"Well, why don't you write about it. And we'll talk next week."
"Sure."
"Luann, when I was writing about my parents, I got really mad."
"See, there's stuff there. Unresolved stuff."
Over the next year or so, I came to understand, and I came to forgive her. But I still didn't necessarily like her much, and I certainly didn't trust her - there was no way I would allow myself to be vulnerable to her. We can forgive, but it's hard and perhaps unwise to forget.
This semi-relationship was acceptable to me.
I'm thirty-two and I've just asked my Dad to be my Best Man at my wedding in six months. My fiancée and I have a nice weekend with mom and dad before heading back home to San Diego.
A massive heart attack kills my dad a couple months later. Within weeks, my mom (stepmom) finds a golfball-sized lump of breast cancer. It is removed and she begins aggressive chemo ("Red Devil").
I decide to make a point to call her once a week. It's a simple, low-cost kindness. I can do this. It's not too inconvenient. I can set the terms. I can do it without dropping emotional guards. There is no risk. It really is the least I can do.
Sometimes mom will go on and on giving me a word-by-word replay of a conversation with someone I don't know about something I have no interest in. But I can multi-task and let her talk. It seems to make her feel good, and, again, it costs me little.
This effortless habit goes on for decades.
At some point, I noticed I was getting something out of these calls.
At milestones, I'd want to share with her.
At some point I realized how consistently supportive and upbeat mom was when I called. Her being happy to hear from me made me feel happy. She was an eager listener and she laughed a lot.
My wife would say "Jeff, she doesn't understand what you're saying. She laughs by default."
"You say that like that's a bad thing! It's a really good, a really supportive, default. When she does get the joke, she laughs even harder. This is a really good thing." Wife and son are the Humor Police and radiate disgust at jokes that don't deliver. Mom is a relief - my effort is never condemned. It might be a damning confession to say this matters more than I objectively think it should.
She is emotionally reliable (within the limits I allow). Unwittingly, I come to count on her.
Not knowing any Gators fans out here in California, calling mom before the Gators games becomes a ritual as necessary and therapeutic as flossing (and probably more frequent). Eventually, she's calling me before the games if I forget.
"There's a launch out of Kennedy in a few minutes, so I'll go outside and watch it." "Who ARE you, woman?!"
Some belittle sports as a silly waste of time and money. They certainly can be a distraction from the real problems of the world - maybe a lot of good would be done if our energies weren't spent on rooting for our teams (or secretly praying that the 8-year old playing against your kid misses his free throws).
But sports can be uniting. Almost all my shirts I play sports (or walk about casually) in are Gators branded. I meet a lot of people that way - a conversation starter.
I can't say that our shared interest in the Gators was the kernel that everything else coalesced around, but maybe it was.
Our arc of redemption took over 50 years. It was never my conscious decision To Mend Things. It started with a simple kindness - a minimal decency. But kindness is like virtue: its own reward in the moment, but transformational when it is an instinct acted upon. When a habit, it costs nothing, effortlessly and unconsciously sowing potent seeds with unknown potential.
I had been mouthing it for years, decades, but when I texted it here, it was the first time I actually felt it, the first time I actually meant it.
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"Hi, son. I'm watching the Gators game again." "I hope they win again!" "You're making me laugh again." "I love you, Mom." |
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Mom passed away a couple of months ago. I am thankful that we had adequate warning. Essentially, we had three of those "Get Serious" warnings: three years ago, three months prior, and then a week prior. I'm really thankful that we were in a good place and that we had some notices that time was precious (Notice: Time is Precious. This moment is precious. Every moment is precious.). Death always sucks, but this was about as Minimally Sucky as it gets on the Suck Scale. I couldn't have scripted it better as we were able to get extended family together on multiple occasions and mom was never in pain and fully coherent (when did she get so coherent!) right up until the end.
I miss her often. When something good or bad happens, or when I have a long-distance drive, my instinct is to call her. Damn. I recruited my sister and her son to be my Gator Buddy for Football Season and Basketball Season and Softball/Baseball Season. But it's hard to fake that - you can gain the knowledge, but enthusiasm has to be innate.
The unconditional support for my humor - I have to search wide for that (Beware, my friends!)
People who know my background give me a lot of credit in my "bigness" in reaching out to my mother and working to mend our relationship.
I tell them, very sincerely, it really was nothing. It wasn't a huge effort; it wasn't a commitment to some Grand Plan. It was no Martyrdom. The risk was minimal. It was a simple decision to be kind in a low-effort, low-risk way.
Once you understand that we are all incomplete and that we all do the best we can do with the resources we have at the moment, things become easy. It becomes easy to forgive ourselves and others - they're two sides of the same coin. It becomes possible to let past transgressions to remain safely in the past. Felt pain becomes shared pain.
The fact that I feel real love and a deep peace now, fifty years in the making, is not something I thought about or would have imagined - or even necessarily wanted at that point. But here I am, so very thankful for this core closure, this full appreciation, able to appreciate her growth, my growth and our growth together. To appreciate my mom fully for my remaining time here.
And to think it started with a simple decision to call regularly, knowing it to be a simple, easy kindness that she'd appreciate.
Call your momma. Even if you don't miss her right this moment, this month, this year. It will lift her up. And you.