So, I got a letter from my mom–adopt-a-mom, that is, not bio-mom. It sounds mundane enough, but considering I haven’t spoken to the woman in about six years, it’s pretty surprising. (Well, to be fair, my brothers and I did see her briefly at Christmas in 2003, but it was for, like, 5 minutes, and I wouldn’t call what we did “talking.”)
Mom and I used to get along great. For most of my childhood, I was way closer to her than I was to dad, but around the time I was getting ready to leave for college, things changed. I think it might’ve had something to do with mom’s clinical schizophrenia and her heavy boozing (now that’s a party, ladies and gentlemen), but whatever the cause, she and I stopped communicating. Even when we talked, we weren’t communicating–we were just speaking in the other’s general direction. Eventually, mom went through a string of failed marriages, financial difficulties, medical and mental woes, and I treated her like I’ve treated friends in similar situations: I completely forgot about her.
I know that sounds harsh, but honestly, it wasn’t a big deal. Contrary to what you might imagine, I didn’t feel any of that hackneyed, soap-operaesque inner-conflict: “Dammit, Carlos, she’s my mother, and I just can’t bear the fact that I’ve had to cut her out of my life!” Fuck that noise. I didn’t even feel guilty. I still don’t. Mom’s become a different person, and like everyone else on the face of the freaking planet, I’ve learned that people sometimes grow into other people–people you may not want to be friends with anymore. I kept up with her via my father and brothers, who still live near her, and that was enough for me.
So, this letter. It was striking for several reasons. It was long. It was handwritten. There were no grammatical errors. (Trust me: half my life has been spent proofreading.) It was earnest–sometimes embarrassingly so, like a sappy acoustic guitar played by a latent lesbian beside a campfire at church youth retreat. But most of all, it sounded kinda like the mom I used to get along with. Well, except for the Jesusfreak stuff at the end. I mean, mom was always a devout Southern Baptist, but now I think she’s gone, like, totally Jan Crouch and shit–a side effect of the twelve step program that helped her kick the bottle, I imagine.
Regardless of the holyrolling, I’m kinda happy to hear from mom again. Well, happier than I’d thought. She’s poor, and she’s living in TheMiddleOfNowhere Mississippi (no, that’s not redundant), but she sounds happy, which is more than I can say of the woman I’ve seen over the past couple of decades. If she had a phone (she doesn’t), I’d call her, but as it is, I guess that sometime over the next couple of weeks, I’ll sit down and write her a letter in return. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
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