Happy Mother's Day, Mommy

This blog isn't going to be about my parents, but I think it should begin with them. After all, That Which is ME started with them.

My mom, Harriet, is the most perfect mother in the world for me. I was lucky enough to have her from the day I was born until March 29, 2015. My world was crushed. From the day I'd found Mommy in her apartment, dehydrated and hardly able to talk, until the day she breathed her last is a period to which I refer as "the five-week nightmare." Lymphoma makes no sense to me: why would it grow so fast, only kill its host so quickly?

Meanwhile, a mere two hundred eighty-three days later, Harry, the best daddy in the whole world, my mom's one and only husband - from 1968 to the day she passed away - followed her to what I can only hope is a Heaven.

Dementia was a far slower murderer than lymphoma. Mommy and I took care of Daddy for over a decade on our own. No nurses, no helpers, no maids. The only local relative we had was guilted into helping; she sent over her husband. Long story short: we think this husband gave Daddy the wrong pills on purpose so we wouldn't ask him again. (It worked.) Six and a half years had passed between when Mommy and I could no longer take care of Daddy, and he went permanently to a nursing home, and the day he died.

My crushed world hadn't even begun to heal. Kinda like when our home got nailed in Hurricane Irene, and then again in Hurricane Sandy. (The USDA has since torn down the house, with many others in our neighborhood. But I digress.) I only hold it together because of the strength I glean from my younger brother and from my husband. My friends are amazing and loyal and strong, and are stories unto themselves, but Little Brother and Gentlemanly Husband are, respectively, my Voice of Reason and my Rock.

Everything I have done right in my life boils down to my choosing to listen to any one of the many lessons our parents taught us. Everything I have done wrong, and/or every intentionally unkindly action I have ever committed even when I thought I was justified, is basically a lesson that I chose to ignore.

Our parents loved us the same quantity but in different ways.  As an adult, I referred to myself as "Harriet's chattel," though I don't know why because she didn't consider me to be her property. She thought it was funny, probably because she knew that I knew that she didn't consider me to be her property. She gave me my first diary. It seems fitting that I name this blog after her.

SO. Mother's Day, 2017

I was in a position this morning to discuss my stepson with other people. My stepson is transgender. He is a man as accepted by the government, according to his updated birth certificate and Social Security card.  The kids of lots of other parents are also transgender. My stepson was the same person to me the day he came out to me as he was the day before he told me. He had only been in my life for a few years, and I had a far easier time with the transition than a lot of his other relatives.

My transition from stepmom of a boy to stepmom of a girl was fairly painless probably because of how my brother and I were raised. Our parents are incredibly welcoming and accepting. While I don't think my dad would have immediately been OK if I'd dated someone of a different ethnic background beyond color, he would have adjusted because he loves me. I used to say that my mom was wasted on us because her kids were heterosexual and had married people of the same ethnic background (other than religion), but if her kids had brought home people who might not be accepted elsewhere, she wouldn't have minded about that. (If the person was a thief, or hurt one of her kids, that would be another story.) I had these awesome, accepting parents; meanwhile, there are kids across the globe who NEED  at least one compassionate parent who will at least give their sexual identity or gender identity a CHANCE, and they don't have that... that which I didn't even realize I am lucky to have had.

Back to my stepson. His mother, a piece of work in her own right, brought home an unsavory guy, and she chose to continue bringing him home even on the nights my stepson was at her home and not my boyfriend-now-husband's and mine. She chose her libido over her kid, which doesn't sit well with me. My stepson had told me that he was scared that his mother's boyfriend would come into his room at night. That sunny Sunday, I held him close to me in bed when he trembled, and told him that he should think about moving in with us. That was what he wanted, he immediately said.

My (oh, it's just easier to drop the "boyfriend-now-" stuff and move onward!) husband and I were living with my mom (Daddy being in a nursing home) as we saved for a house of our own.

When I told Mommy that E, my stepdaughter, was now A, my stepson, her reaction had basically just been, "Okay." She went with the flow.

When A and I went in to ask Mommy if A could move in, and why, she tried not to cry when she said, "Of course," because she wanted to protect A as much as I did.

One of a million reasons I love my mom, and one of a million reasons I wish she was here to continue to guide me, and one of a million reasons I will never enjoy Mother's Day again. I miss her so much. I'm so proud to be able to truthfully say how awesomely she treated my stepson.