There’s been three women who have been pivotal in my upbringing to this point: my mom, Stargirl and you.
Semantics aside, we’ll have to agree whether we do or not that 28 and five-sixths years can still be considered in the thick of upbringing. Let’s be honest, you and I know from living it that childhood ended kind of early and then we got thrust into adulthood and may have missed some steps along the way; I’m just starting to catch up on them.
My mom’s role was an albeit short, but integral one, being the first person to ever seemingly turn me out as trash she wasn’t prepared to polish and spit-shine into something presentable. It wasn’t until I was around 16 that I realized that it was more about her than about me, which kind of makes sense since I was only two at the time and how much damage can a two year old really do, right? I hope you’d gotten to know and feel that release before you were as old as I was, even though our realities of mothers were different.
Stargirl was the first friend I ever had who was unequivocally there, even if I was saying that she didn’t need to be. She was also the person that I kind of tried to imprint upon my idealistic relationship with the mother I should have gotten. For most of our friendship. Which, in hindsight, might have marred it a little and made it something obsessional and unhealthy on my part. You can only spend so long trying to make some one think that you’re good enough, when they already do, before something in your brain flips to the I’ll never be as good as this person and it just serves to make your esteem more wounded. Good thing that it only took me, like, eight years to figure that one out.
You, on the other hand, came onto the scene without much concern, once I got past the will she like me and am I pretty enough and she’s cooler than I am and this is gonna be like the nerd who hangs with the cool kids in junior high because he has a car.
Except I didn’t have a car.
Then I found out that you had your own car monkeys clawing up your spine and that maybe on some level we were having the same thoughts. And it’s kind of often, but not all the time (because that would be too weird and the Universe hands us the shit that we can handle, right?) been like we’ve travelled the same roads on different days and my proverbial LeCar has just narrowly missed pulling up beside your Citation at a red light.
Synchronicity, you dig?
Onto the pivotal part.
You are the woman who has taught me more than any other single woman ever has to present day, maybe more than all of them, combined.
(this already feels a little eulogy-like, so let’s get over that shall we? You’re not dead. But if you were, you’d totally look good in navy blue. Just sayin’.)
You took me, this person who was convinced that no one wanted any part of my mess and I had no business asking them of it, and you pushed your way into it, filth and all, while I was holding my hands up, protesting that you didn’t have to. You were there to make me laugh when I thought I might be knocked up, when I found out I was, when I wasn’t going to be anymore and then again when I had no one else standing by my side at death’s door.
The lesson was simple. Asking for help is okay. But the result was expansive, because if it weren’t for those few weeks when I needed you most, but didn’t even know what it was that I needed, I wouldn’t be where I am now. You taught me to trust in the process, in family, to create a bond that didn’t require daily maintenance in the form of shoddy domesticated bribery.
You may, I walk a tightrope saying, because so much of my parenting ideals are based on doing the exact opposite of what I was born into, have created a mother out of me. Not because I watched you and took notes and then attempted to ace the non-existent exam in being a mom 101, but because it was so natural for you to just take care and then back away when you were confident that I could dive from the nest myself without breaking a wing in the process.
Welcome to me as a Mom, now. Without learning the hard way that I could and should trust, I wouldn’t have, and without it, Zoë wouldn’t have so many important, strong female influences in her life, and the adoptive family we’ve culled from other people’s bloodlines, and the right to walk down a stairwell by herself.
You gave me a lot when you accidentally became a person of great importance to me, but of most import is the facility to rub my own back in circles while shushing it’s gonna be alright.
And the willingness to believe on a good day that maybe there’s a writer inside of me.
It’s not just the dichotomy of Mary and Magdelene, and the ability to intermix nervous humour into the height of a drama-ensconced conversation. It’s not that I could put you on a pedestal of matriarchy and matrimony while also seeing imperfections and judging them as just, earned and still ahead of the curve.
It’s not the few conversations we’ve had about how we have or haven’t lived alike and what you did or what I should. Because, really, you’ve never advised me in a way that the status quo might, which has put you into your own class. You’ve used phrases like, fuck yeah, you deserve to be selfish and I won’t judge you if you change your mind later, but I think you’re doing the right thing for you, now.
It’s not just that I can tell a tale so far away from my proudest moment it’s like, in Denmark, and you will laugh so loudly, bent over and tell me you love me for it. And that makes those facets of me seem just a little bit okay – at the very least, acceptable to someone who has no reason to accept them.
It’s that you, in spite of the oasis of created persona, are real. You’re one of the first truly authentic people I’ve met. Even when you’re not intentionally humble, you are; when you’re not exuding confidence, it’s acceptable and doesn’t chafe; whether you’re in need of a shower, in layers of breathable cotton or dressed for a night on the town, you’re you.
You is always a little different, some days thinking too little of herself and others, more realistic about her abilities and talents. But at the same time, even when we haven’t actually talked and all I’ve been able to do is read something into the lines on the leaves in the bottom of yet another cup of tea, you’re the same.
And that’s a comfort.
Because you, unintentionally, I’m half-convinced, remained fairly removed from my daily wanderings – which was something I didn’t know I needed, but did in order to actualize a relationship with you born from respect and not simply easiness – but whenever we’ve come back together, I haven’t felt like we needed to catch up and realign chakras so that our combined chi didn’t erode.
I got sad initially, because it felt like you were right there not calling me and I was too phonophobic to do anything more than tabulate excuses why I shouldn’t call, and what a waste of time that was when we could have been using it. But now, I think that as much as this sucks and how I might have a little dirt in my eyes which I am willing to pass off as bad homekeeping even though we both know that I don’t really have a problem with not cleaning enough, I’ll get over it with enough back rubbing.
Because there’s a couple more things you’ve accidentally have imparted in your wake: a want for international travel with Zoë, of all people; and the knowledge that picking up the phone isn’t scary at all, when you’re on the other end of it.
Guess I’d better get some semblance of a long-distance plan.
I love you, dude.
