Mom

This is one of my favorite pictures of Mom.

I often make fun of trailer park people, but I'm allowed. See, I was practically born in a trailer park. Okay, so I was born in a hospital in Biloxi, but we lived in a trailer. Whatever. As you can see, it was a big red trailer that my Dad hauled from Mississippi to California. With Mom, my big sister, and me.

They say Mom's know their sons are gay, often before the sons themselves know it...or at least are willing to admit to anyone including themselves. I think that was true of my Mom. One Thanksgiving she asked me THAT question. I think I'd always known it was coming, but I was never prepared for it. We were sitting in the living room of their house in Blue Canyon and the pellet stove was dropping pellets, sparking a fire and warming the house. It was just Mom and me in the living room that day, and she asked me. "Are you gay?"

I stammered. Turned every shade of red imaginable. And began to sweat.

"Because it must be hard for you," she said. "You must feel quite alone, not knowing how anyone will react. But it's okay."

And I reacted. "No."I said, quite firmly, rubbing my palms on my Levis to wipe the perspiration away. "I'm not."

And she said that was okay. But it wasn't. Because I was. Because I wasn't really ready to admit it to my family. So I reacted. I went upstairs to the room I stayed in, packed my bags and said I had to go. And I did. And I stayed away and I didn't call....except to say that I couldn't come up on Christmas. I was doing something else that year and couldn't make it. Sorry.

My Dad called just before the holidays and asked if I'd drive up to their house. They wanted to exchange gifts since I wouldn't be there. Stubborn, hard-headed fool that I was....am...I said I could come up for the day only.

So I drove up and we exchanged gifts. My Mom was sleeping when I got there, but she came out and sat down at the kitchen table while I opened my gift. Then my Dad left the room and Mom started to cry. Started to apologize. To me! She was sorry if she'd upset me, hurt my feelings, made me mad. She was sorry. I was still angry. I was still in a closet somewhere, unwilling, unable to say those words to anyone, much less my own mother. My mother who knew, because mothers always seem to know, even before their sons.

It wasn't too much longer after that when I did come out. And my mother didn't say, "I knew." She didn't smirk like she was saying, "Tell me something I don't know."She said she loved me. And when I met Carlos and moved three-thousand miles away to be with him, she said she was thrilled to have another son-in-law. She made him feel welcome from the moment she laid eyes on him. That's my mom. And Dad? His first words to me after I came out: Ï love you son." His words to me on the day I left California for Florida: "Be happy."

She loved me.

My mother died on February 17, 2007. She was a fantastic woman. Wife mother nurse artist chef baker deli-owner general store-owner snow blower. Mother. She and my dad were married just shy of fifty-two years. Talk about love.


There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about my mother and wish she was here. Not a day goes by that something doesn't happen and I want to call her and tell her. But I do talk to her. I do tell her the silly things. The important things. The sad things. The single most important thing of all.


I love you, Mom.