I am lucky enough to have my mom still, and I am grateful for her presence, but I'll be honest, I haven't always been.
My mom has had many names: Sarge, The Great White Huntress, She Who Must be Obeyed and Mu-ther (usually said with an eye roll). Now she is Mom, Ma if I am trying to get her attention (she is not hearing as well as she used to, unless you whisper, she's still all over a whisper).
My mom and I are close now, but that wasn't always the case. Truth, I haven't always understood her. A lot of that changed when I turned 21. Not because I magically became an adult or because she suddenly "got" me, but because I suddenly "got" her.
That was the night I found out how hard it was for my mom to keep me. Not have me, that was apparently the easy part, but to keep me. You see, the thing is, she was planning to give me up for adoption. She had me, I was in the nursery and she had chosen not to see me. Then one of the nurses decided to put me in her arms while she was asleep (now with HIPPA and privacy policies and nursing ethics and all, she would have likely lost her job, but thank goodness this was 1969). She saw me, fell instantly in love (really, I used to be cute, as hard as that is to believe) and decided that she needed to keep me. Unfortunately, this was 1969, and initial papers had been signed, and she was a single parent. So, within a few days of giving birth to me, she had to go back to work and earn money to keep me.
Reading the letter my mom wrote to me when I was born sitting at Max's Opera Cafe at Stanford drinking my first (legal) cocktail and heading to see Bill Cosby at the Circle Star, I got it. I got the hardness, I got the fight I had often witnessed in her. Most of all though, I got how important I was to her when I was born and that by giving me the letter she had written so long ago, how important I was to her when I turned 21.
Fast forward a little under two years, and I found out I was pregnant. First, I was shocked, because I would have told you I couldn't be pregnant. Second, I was shocked because the doctor said I was further along than was biologically possible. Third, I was shocked because although I was terrified, and needed to know everything I could before I said it out loud, I found that deep down in my heart, in the place where you are brutally honest with yourself, I knew I was going to be a Mom.
When I told my mom, she only had one question for me "What do you want to do? Whatever the answer to that question is, I will help you do that." And I knew she would, because she knew.
I had to go to a different hospital in order to get a sonogram, and it was another hour-and-a-half home from that hospital. I asked the tech how far along she thought I was, told her I just needed to know if the baby was healthy, and asked her to seal the pics in an envelope for me.
I got home, called my doctor and said "I guess I need to set a follow-up appointment, because we're doing this." She asked me if I freaked out when I saw that it was twins and I dropped the phone and slid down the wall. I hadn't opened the envelope. When I did, there they were--two profiles, two melon sized heads. Two babies.
My mom laughed hysterically and said "You have never once done anything the easy way." My uncle just laughed uncontrollably and my aunt said "One for you and one for me."
Alex said........well, that's a different story.
Happy Mother's Day Mom--I told our little story out here on the internet because I want people to know that when I say now to people who knew us then that we really are great friends now, they will understand how that happened. And they will understand when I say Thank You with a great sincerity for fighting so hard to keep me.
Thank you to Alex for making me a better Mom, and thank you to Devin and Gavin for making sure that I have built up my patience inch by inch. I love you all.
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