RYAN LEE | 5.7.2008
I made it through the second letter in my mother’s name. By her middle initial, tears covered my face, and my voice was paralyzed by that jittery breathing that comes when you cry uncontrollably.
I was disappointed because I was proud of the acrostic poem I wrote, and wanted everyone to know how special my mother was. My second grade teacher was obsessed with acrostic poems — where you use each letter in someone’s name to start a new line in the poem — so every student had to write one for his or her mother and invite her to a Mother’s Day brunch.
Normally a solid public speaker, I was startled by my voice cracking. But then all of my anxieties exploded at the podium, and I began to hope I was crying enough to show my mother how much I loved her, and convince her to take me with her.
It was a Friday, and immediately after the Mother’s Day brunch, my mom was leaving Chicago for the weekend to attend her 20-year high school reunion. My sister and I lobbied and threw tantrums the entire week leading up to our mother’s trip, begging her to take us along; but she was adamant, she was going alone.
as a “before and after” moment, one of the triggers of my family’s transition from the comfort I knew during the first 10 years of my life to the … peculiarity … of our home life since. I imagine the weekend included a lot of embarrassment for my mom, who thought her classmates would judge her for being a single mother and a legal secretary.
And I’m convinced she numbed her self-doubt with heroin-filled syringes, and the romantic affirmation of a fellow addict. Our family’s stability — and my obliviousness — continued for three years after the class reunion, but in retrospect, I believe that weekend accelerated my mother’s fall until she got so bad that someone sat her children down and told them he was scared for their mother.
Four years after I learned about my mother’s addiction, I spent the night at a friend’s house without calling home. The next morning, my mother was livid, and I was shell-shocked. I didn’t call home because it never occurred to me that my mother would notice I wasn’t there, distracted as she always was running the streets.
The selfishness of my mother’s love still stings today, particularly since I see that selfishness in my interactions with people, thankfully minus the heroin. She taught me that no matter how much someone says they love you, there is no guarantee they will be there for you; and that you can love someone so much, and in order to protect them, tell them point-blank lies for 26 years.
I must learn to own my emotions, but I can’t imagine she isn’t a major reason I continue to struggle to love and feel loved in a healthy way.
, my mother’s lessons force a smile across my face. Like the other night when, feeling overwhelmed, I thought about all of the times life knocked her on her ass, and she never thought twice about waking up the next day and making another way.
I’m sure she thought twice, and that she often wanted to give up. But as faulty as her love was, she knew my sister and I were depending on her and willed herself to continue.
I never had friends over to watch TV or spend the night because I was always too embarrassed of our home and my mother’s condition. Those insecurities have faded in adulthood, and every one of my friends who meets her struggles to explain to me how much they love my mom, and what a caring, cool person she is.
That’s what I was trying to get everyone to see in my second-grade poem, but I couldn’t stop crying because I knew I would miss her. I never knew how much.
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