My Mother

Today is Mother's Day. Due to some misunderstanding, our annual dinner reservations were screwed up by my brother. So we ate very late. Ever got dressed up only to find that you're not going anywhere for another four hours? Grrrr!!! The couture outfit only holds up for so long before, like its owner, it gets tired and frumpy and difficult. But I digress. Tonight's dinner was the usual "there are some suprises that we will learn" night. For the last five years or so, mom has started to talk about things in her past. She had figured that we (her kids) are now adult enough to handle whatever it is that she is going to say. Tonight was also different. My sisters-in-law were not present and the grandkids were nowhere to be found. And so she starts...

1. She almost died when she was three in a freak swimming accident. That is why she is deathly afraid of any body of water, out in the open or contained in a pool. She cringes when she hears that we (or her grandkids) went swimming.

2. She seperated from my dad for a week. My grandmother wouldn't take her back. She was three months pregnant at the time. Of me. She now says she's glad her mother didn't want her back.

3. Although she grew up in Hawaii, she "hated" it there. She doesn't even want to visit. Why? See #1.

4. She says she's always known that one of her sons would be gay. By the time that my youngest brother was two, she knew who would be the "one" (was there any doubt?). She says she's "happy and proud" to have a gay son (ok...I almost cried).

5. She never liked any of her in-laws. Neither my dad's mother nor his brothers and sisters. She thought my dad's siblings were always jealous of him. Yet she genuinely cares for my cousins from that side of my family. She said whatever is going on is not my cousins' fault. Whatever that means.

6. She didn't learn how to drive until she was married. She never drove before then. Someone in her family drove her if she needed to be somewhere. She's a far better driver than I and she had voluntarily stopped driving now that she is 75. Now she likes taking the MUNI or the BART.

7. She talked about her miscarriage. I could have had a sister. She was almost six months old when my mother had a miscarriage. She didn't like to talk about this but my brothers and I have always known. I think it was my dad who told us the story. Or my grandmother.

8. She doesn't normally say "I love you" to any of us. She's not the touchy-feely kind of mother. She knows that we know that she loves us. In the meantime, we don't let a day pass by without telling her how much we love her. I even made my brother in L.A. promise that he would call her at least three times a week and once during the weekend. So far, he hasn't failed.

All this time, I am thinking, "Wow! Look at what this person has accomplished. She has single-handedly raised four crazy boys yet they all turn out to be as normal as they can get!" I am sure we are all amazed by our own mothers. We all look for her in us and in those whom we love. Like it or not, we also look for our mothers in those whom we want to spend the rest of our lives with. That's a little Freudian for some but look a little closer and you'll know it's true.


...Mama I hope this makes you smile
I hope you're happy with my life
At peace with every choice I made
How I've changed
Along the way
And I know you believed in all of my dreams
And I owe it all to you, mama
---Mama by Il Divo