When I Was A Girl: Part 1

When I was eight years old Pat moved into our house.  She had an amazing t-shirt collection, which made her cool in my eyes.  But she was also smart, well-read, and worldly, with books about philosophers and great artists.  I remember my mother awkwardly trying to explain their relationship, but she seemed to lack the vocabulary.  It was 1984 in the deep South and words like gay and lesbian carried with them unbearable weight and stigma. 

Pat had her own room, but it was only for show.  When friends would ask about her I told her she was our roommate, but I knew that it was more than that. 

It was a secret that took a lot of energy to maintain.  My mother lived in fear that I would be taken away or that she would lose her job as a teacher.  Her fears were valid since there were no legal protections in place at the time.  She over-compensated by being the PTA President, room mother and Girl Scout leader. 

Their relationship, which had grown tumultuous, ended and for years mother was alone.  In that time she did a lot of soul searching; she dealt with family secrets and personal relationships all in an attempt to be a better person.  She asked hard questions about herself and the people around her. 

But eventually she ended up in a new relationship, one that she entered into emotionally and mentally healthy.  It was a relationship that lasted until she died.

It was also a relationship that played a huge part in my life.  It brought my mom a great deal of happiness, but was still, in many ways, shrouded in secrecy. My mom’s partner and I were never close.  We didn’t fight; we were just two people who were bound together by the one thing we had in common. 

I invited her to lunch, but I didn’t tell her why.  An intensely private person I knew she wouldn’t come if she knew I was going to write about her.  It was an open, honest, sometimes difficult conversation, filled with stories and revelations.  It was only the second time in 20 years that we had shared a meal, just the two of us.  When I did tell her about my project she asked that I not use her name and I respect that.

She entered their relationship with her own baggage.   In the ten years they were together, she never came out to her children.  They were grown, but she still feared that she would lose them.  It became my secret to keep, but it was never my secret to tell.  Those secrets resulted in resentment and tension.  My mother spent a lot of time feeling torn between the two of us, and that I regret.

The day after my mother died our family gathered at my aunt’s house on the river.  We knew the funeral wouldn’t be until the end of the week and my aunt felt we needed to be together.  My grandmother refused to go, so I made the long drive across the bay by myself.  It was the first of many "firsts".  It was a miserable afternoon filled with awkward silences and good intentions.  We all sat on the back porch overlooking the swamp.  An owl appeared.  There was plenty of wildlife around the house, but I had never seen an owl.  I remember saying to someone that I thought it was my mother checking in on us.

As we were sharing stories over lunch she said, “You know, the day after your mother died I was alone in the house and I heard an owl.  I’d never heard an owl at the house before.  I think it was your mother checking in on us.”

Maybe so.

As a child it can be hard to separate the love a parent has for their child from the love they have for a partner.  I had picked up the pieces in the past.  There was a time when I was in college, when activism seemed like it was the answer to everything, that I looked to her to be a leader.  But now I realize she was already doing that, just in her own, quiet way.  She spent hours offering support and counsel to young people struggling with their sexuality.  She sat with mothers and fathers as they tried to reconcile their religious beliefs and political ideals with their love for their child.

Ten years have passed since my mom died.  Her partner is in a new relationship, one that is open and honest.  I’m glad.

We said a lot of things that afternoon, things that have needed to be said for a long time.  What I didn’t have a chance to say to her at lunch was that I’m grateful that she and my mom had that time together.  I’m grateful I had a chance to see my mom so happy.  But I still regret that so much of our lives were lived in secrecy and fueled by fear. 

It feels like we are living in uncertain times.  I knew this was a story I was going to write, but I wasn’t sure when.  But it seems important now.  I see other families like ours, which seem nontraditional to many, who are now offered the protections of any other family.  But those protections, those basic rights, could be threatened.

As I sit here I think of the motto Ecce Quam Bonum, which is taken from Psalm 133: "Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers and sisters live together in unity."  We've come a long way; let's not turn back now. 

Just before she died, mother sent an email to friends and family.  She said, "I love 90% of who I am 90% of the time."  We should all hope to be able to say the same. 

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You Are One Kind of Person

Ricky spent most of his days sitting in an abandoned car that was parked outside the trailer he shared with his mother, siblings, and a family of rabbits that ran free.  The trailer was propped up on concrete blocks to keep it from flooding during the rains that kept the Bayou perpetually damp.  It had been pulled up in front of their previous trailer that had burned when a space heater caught fire.  The car didn’t run, but the battery allowed him to listen to the radio and offered a refuge.  Ricky, who suffered from a laundry list of developmental and behavioral issues didn’t attend school.  Instead, my mother, a homebound teacher for the public school system, taught him three days a week.  She too avoided the trailer, so the two of them would sit in the car completing the necessary requirements dictated by the school board.  But my mother knew that the skills she was teaching him had little value in the life of a 5^th generation fisherman with an IQ well below normal.  So she set out to create her own curriculum, one that she felt would benefit Ricky in the long run.  Once he was reading on a 4^th grade level and had mastered basic math, she went to work teaching him how to read the Farmer’s Almanac and determining how much money he could make based on the market price of shrimp.  Ricky liked to tinker, so she found a video about washing machine repair at the library and a donated washing machine, and the two of them set out to return it to working order.  Her methods were unconventional and often controversial, but they always had the needs of her students in mind.

There were countless other students like Ricky who came in and out of her life during her tenure as a public school homebound teacher.  Morgan, another student in the Bayou, learned math shooting pool in the backroom of the local gas station.  Their science lesson was held on the beach and he learned to read thanks to Spider Man comic books.  When she agreed to teach the first HIV+ student in the school system, they read about the death rituals of different cultures around the world then made up their own.  Whatever worked. 

Her students called her Miss Pat and she blended into any environment thanks to her unassuming personality.  She could walk into any home without judgment.  She knew that for most of these families each day was a struggle to survive.  Like a country doctor, families often showed their gratitude with what they had to offer:  fresh shrimp, vegetables from their garden.

She often took me to work with her.  At the time, I thought I was getting a day off of school, but later I realized that what I was learning was a lesson in gratitude and compassion.  There are many things from my childhood that shaped my world view, but my mother’s work as a special ed homebound teacher taught me the most about empathy.

I saw her job begin to wear her down.  Regulations kept her from serving so many of these children in a way that would allow them to be self-sufficient.  Even more, she knew, would never be self-sufficient.  She saw single parents trying to navigate work while tending to the daily needs of their child.  She witnessed families dealing with addiction, incarceration, and the vicious cycle of poverty.  And she started to lose hope.

There were hundreds of families over the years, but one family held a special place in my mom’s heart.  Mother began teaching Johnathan when he was eleven.  A quiet child whose medical needs kept him in and out of school, he quickly became one of my mother’s most beloved students. 

His mother, Miss Sandra, stayed home to care for him.  A skilled seamstress, she studied at the Art Institute of Atlanta.  With brilliant smiles and infectious laughs, they respected one another.  They navigated parenting together.  When my mom was dying she worried about Johnathan and his mother.  Miss Sandra was also dealing with a health crisis, and she worried that Johnathan would also find himself grieving her loss as well.  Before she died she signed over the title to her truck, because she wanted to make sure they had reliable transportation.

It had been several years since we had seen each other, another example of life getting in the way of well intentioned plans.  Miss Sandra arrived for our dinner together in a lovely outfit she made herself.  Johnathan brought his new wife.  My daughter joined me because I wanted her to meet them and to hear the stories they had to tell.  These stories are the only way she’s been able to get to know her grandmother and I am grateful that there are so many to tell.

Miss Sandra was happy to oblige.  I could tell that revisiting those memories brought her such joy.  She calls my mom her sister, and they are.  These two women, one white and one black, might have seemed different on the outside, but at the end of the day they were two single moms trying to raise good kids.  They understood each other.

Today Johnathan is married to a middle school teacher.  His health has stabilized.  He’s worked for the same company for the past 10 years, rising through the ranks.  The shy young boy who used to keep his head down now radiates confidence.  

After dinner Johnathan and I walked out to the car together.  He told me a story:  He was dealing with a family crisis so Mom took him to lunch at a locally owned restaurant to cheer him up.  She said to him, “You are not defined by your family because, Sweet Thang, you are one kind of person.”  But something else happened at lunch that day.  The waitress kept ignoring Johnathan, speaking only to my mother.  Johnathan asked repeatedly for a Sprite and she never brought it.  Finally, my mom confronted her and said, “Excuse me, but you haven’t brought my son his Sprite.”  The waitress, flustered, said that they were out of Sprite.  Mother looked around the restaurant pointing out the other customers who had Sprite.  And then the two of them got up and walked out. 

My mother was a tireless advocate for her students and she saw it as her duty both inside and outside the classroom.  Her students always knew that she had their back.  These are the stories that I crave when I miss her most.  These are the stories I was never told, but make me so proud.  My mother and the people she brought into our little world helped to shape my first 40 years, but these are the stories that I hope will inspire my actions in the next 40.