Love, Mom

My mother is a Taurus who was raised by two Taureans. She’s an only child. She’s one of the most brave and stubborn people I’ve ever met. She’s beautiful. She never lies. She is grounded and ethical in all she does. She is a person of character and deep integrity. She is kind to everyone she meets. She listens to understand. Her heart is fucking huge. She is not perfect. She doesn’t try to be. She remembers names and faces. If she makes a mistake, she apologizes. She doesn’t forget birthdays or anniversaries. She is not sentimental, but she loves selective nostalgia. She loves A Christmas Story and the 24 hour marathon. Her faith is unshakable. She’s a scientist, a total nerd, a life-long learner and my first best friend.

She and my father have been married for over 30 years and their relationship has been a story of continued resilience and collaboration I’ll always look up to. I know they love one another, I know they show up for one another, not just in the superficial ways some long-term couples tend to fall into to perform their care for one another, but in the small ways that (in my mind) indicate genuine lasting love. Yes, I’m being idealistic because they are my parents! I’m allowed to think it’s beautiful how they can’t wait to come home to one another when they are apart for any reason. They have full lives and independent personalities, but their friendship is the bedrock of their bond, they call each other throughout the day to catch up on whatever has happened, or just to hear each others’ voices. This post is all about their love story and why I’ll always hold them both in high esteem.

But today is about mother’s. And I’ve been blessed to be the kid of the best of the best.

She’s given me more than a lifetime’s supply of advice about love and relationships, and most recently, her algorithm has provided a steady stream of Mel Robbins’ content for her to pass along to me on instagram, our text threads and in most conversations.

My mother is brutally honest. If I get a haircut I have a suspicion she won’t like, I tell her in advance I want a rose-colored glasses opinion. Most recently I was terrified to tell her I had gotten bangs, but she knew I was sensitive about it, so she pivoted from her usual line about why my face shape wasn’t right for them, and sent me just what I needed to hear.

She has held my hand across the country and the world in every dark moment. She’s welcomed every person I’ve ever loved into our family with ease and without suspicion. Though, when I’ve been romantically linked with people who weren’t great for me, she’s been the first and loudest to call out what isn’t working. Or to remind me of things I’ve shared with her as they’ve unraveled (more on why talking to family and friends selectively about your relationships is healthy in future post). Fundamentally, it’s always been clear that my parents genuinely do want me to be happy, even if being happy means sometimes things I want to hold onto with all my teeth, fall away.

This last chapter ending has been harder than most for us to parse out. I think my parents both felt a sense of relief at me having found who we all believed to be my person. In the aftermath of the breakup, though, my mom was one of the loudest voices reminding me I had been unhappy. I had felt discarded for over a year. I had not been able to be my best self while mired in anxiety that I wasn’t good enough to be chosen by the person I was in love with. Emotional avoidance does a number to make a securely attached person squarely lose their mind. I had done everything within my power to fix what felt broken, but I’d been working so hard on my own, and frankly, had run out of steam to keep it all together by myself. So when things ended, even if I felt like the rug was pulled out from under me, my mom was the voice of realism reminding me how the imbalance in emotional investment had affected my heart, my brain, my body. Her initial words were the jumpstart I needed to get into the initial stages of the grieving process. She’s still the voice of calm I need to prevent me from backsliding or repeating this pattern of loving someone emotionally unavailable ever again.

I do trust her. Implicitly.

When I was growing up she told me how she wished she’d been a little more connected to her own mother as she aged, and I took that as a mission to stay as connected as I possibly could to her throughout our lives. Though I’ve gone about as far away from my small hometown as I possibly could (New York, Paris, LA), she and I have stayed connected on a daily (if not more) basis. She’s visited me everywhere I’ve ever lived. She knows what is happening on a granular basis in my life and I’ve tested the limits of what I share with her on multiple occasions. Even in college, I took her with me to bars, to cast parties, to friend’s birthday dinners. I wanted her with me on my 21st, even though she doesn’t drink. She came out to clubs and danced with the best of us. Most recently, I dragged her out to Karaoke and my friends welcomed her into our little Monday evening rituals on the west side of LA. (I’ll never live down a particular rendition of “Stacey’s Mom” or watching my mom be flung around a dance floor while I tried to keep my shit together to sing “Total Eclipse of the Heart”).

My life, and all my experiences are so much better when I can involve my mother in them. I just have more fun when she’s around.

My mom knows me better than anyone. She knows when I ask her to borrow jewelry it means I’m getting emotionally attached to an object that reminds me of her and it likely means I want to permanently keep the thing I’m “borrowing.” I’ve got on two pairs of her gold hoops right now and her high school class ring. I never take these off.

We talk about everything and nothing on our daily catchups. Yesterday was her birthday and she had lunch with my aunt. I know her order at Panera by heart and so do all the cashiers. She’s an easy person to talk to. She’s the best listener, she never makes you feel like she doesn’t want to hear what you have to say. She doesn’t listen to respond, she really leans in, even if you’re repeating the same story for the 31st time.

My mom has lifelong friendships. She’s always instilled a community-first ethic in myself and my brother. She spent her whole career in non-profit healthcare, the definition of a giver, and she pours her love into family and friends, even when it is not returned equally or at all. This kind of selfless love was modeled for me at a young age. A love ethic where you really put your best out there as much as you possibly can and with as little expectation from the other person as possible. It sounds strange to describe it like this, an outpouring of kindness even in the face of less generous reciprocation (her sending care packages to estranged family members because they were in need of basic health items around the holidays even after harmful behavior), but my mother knows how to love unconditionally and I have done my best to learn this character trait by heart.

My mother is not a doormat. She’s fierce, she’s direct and she does not pull punches. She will not be fucked with, by a La-Z-Boy salesman or a loved one. She’s sure of her integrity, her power and her purpose in the world. These are traits I’m trying my best to add to my own roster, but the bottom line is I came out a little more sensitive than she is (she says that’s ok).

Sometimes, I wish I were a little less needy, I wish I were a little less codependent, but I also know I can’t help it and if anyone deserves my constant attention and love and affection, it’s my mother. Loving her has been the foundation upon which I’ve tried to love everyone in my life. And while my definition of love isn’t changing wholly, I am trying to bake in a modicum of the self-worth and self-respect that kept my mom from staying in situations with people she loved when they made it clear they couldn’t show up for her.

She broke off an engagement after she found out about infidelity. She built a life for herself without a partner and had her own apartment with her beloved cat, Rascal. A few months into dating she told my dad he should take a hike if he wasn’t in it for the long haul. He left for 3 months and then came back once he’d sorted out the simple fact that he didn’t want to do life without her. I’ve always thought of this as a brave defining moment. Her being sure about a partner, but needing momentum to feel mutual — stating her needs clearly and having them be met, not directly in the moment, but genuinely being sure she could survive him walking away better than being with a partner who she wasn’t sure was ready to choose her.

Though I would mostly call my dad the adventurous one in their relationship, my mother has a high capacity for emotional risk. She is not afraid of tough conversations, and she knows the weight big life decisions carry well enough to prepare herself for any outcome. She’s able to take emotional risk with a pretty even head / heart.

Yesterday, I asked her if she ever regretted having kids and she said “not for a second. There were moments I had no idea what I was doing, and moments I was sure I wasn’t prepared for, but I never regretted you and your brother. You’re the best things I’ve ever done. You taught me how to be alive.”

I ask her this a couple times a year because I get overwhelmed thinking about the fact that I’m the age she was when my brother and I were both small children. I feel so behind all the time in terms of where I’m at in my life and in love, but she’s never made me feel that way. She’s kept up the through-line that what is meant for me will find me in due time. She’s ridden the wave of disappointment and delight right by my side. She usually picks up the phone when I call and she never makes me feel like I’m too much or too broken. She makes me feel loved. She makes me feel safe. She is one of the best models upon which I can measure what genuine, mutual and adaptive love feels like.

I may not be who she predicted I would turn into, but she has loved every version of myself we’ve cycled through. I will never be truly alone because the love she’s shown me through my life is not something which will ever be taken away or destroyed. She and my father both have made it clear, they’re locked in to being in my corner and their love comes without strings.

I know how lucky I am (as a queer person, raised in the rural south) to be able to write these words down and put them out on the internet. I trust that with each new plot line in my life to come, they’ll continue to be flexible. I don’t have to guess with them. I just trust them implicitly to love me as they’ve promised they would, because my parent’s are both people of their word. They are consistent. They are generous. They are not afraid to say how much they feel for their kids, or the other people in their lives.

Today, I asked her this question:

My mom has shown me through actions and words how much she loves me. Both of my parents have. They show up to every performance, watch every film, celebrate me calling to tell them I’m a semi-finalist in another writing competition, or that I’ve been hired to do an unpaid professional development thing, or that my clients for matchmaking work are getting married. They celebrate my brother and me loudly, without reserve, but also without overstating their belief in our talents (they don’t exaggerate when it comes to what is coming down the pipeline, they make us feel special based on what is real, true and presently exciting in our lives).

Love like this exists out there — this kind of unconditional, see you through the densest fog, kind of love. Today, I’m feeling particularly grateful to be on the receiving end of this kind of care from my earliest moments. We’ve been through a lot together, and still, she’s my first call for every high high and low low.

It’s a shock to me I’m just now unraveling this kind of love (connected, unconditional, adaptable, willing to work hard / push through friction) is what I’ve sought in romantic partnerships (maybe part of why I’ve been so attracted to earth signs in all my most significant relationships: Taurus, Taurus, Virgo, Virgo, Virgo). My dad and I are both fiery Aries little guys, just burning up with romantic tendencies and daredevil energy. We fall fast and hard, but we crave balance. We crave a steadiness in our lives that we don’t always know how to provide for ourselves. I’ve always thought of myself as his mirror (part of why my mom and I get along so well). But I’m an April 16th Aries, a stone’s throw away from being a Taurus myself. And I’ve got this Taurus Venus which makes me stubbornly loyal, protective of those I care about and such a nester when I want to be.

Everyone says I look just like my mother, and I always blush when they say it because to me, she remains the most beautiful person in my life, inside and out. I hope I grow into half the person she is. I hope I absorb the wisdom she so freely gives to me when I ask for it, and even when I don’t. I don’t know if I’ll have children myself, but I hope if and when I do, I am able to be as available, as invested and as curious as my mom has been.

I could really write about her forever. She probably won’t read this, given that she hates being photographed or overly praised, but I’m across the country on a contract for a show right now, thinking how much I’d like to be splitting cups of chicken noodle soup with bread and unsweet tea with her outside in the sun. Or sitting on the porch watching the rain fall as the Blue Heron swoops over the dock. Or binge-watching a real-estate reality show until we’re both deliriously tired. Or organizing photos from the past and asking her about every third face I don’t remember.

Instead, I’ll FaceTime her again on our lunch break. The thing about this kind of love it really is enough to heal any wound. Or at least make the hurt bearable enough to push through.

I love you Sandy. I’m so grateful to be your kid.

xx,

Mak