5/12/2024
Dear Mom,
Thank you for not being perfect.
I needed to understand how to love someone as much as we love our mothers – as much as I love you - while actually allowing space for them to be persons first. You taught me this early, although for many years I thought it was an explanation about you dating. My zoom lens was too close; it was actually about being a full human whose life force has to come first.
What made your motherhood the brightest was that you took care of the most basic animal kingdom mandate—you provided for the need. If it was affection to soften my Vulcan tendencies, you gave me the aunties. If it was firm male guidance with authority, there is dad. Howard is still a head scratcher, but the DNA is great inside of his clan, for when I needed family everywhere. If I needed an advocate you were ready.
For the most part. Of course this has shifted, mainly because you did not secure the oxygen mask meant for you before tending to others.
And you can’t breathe. Because it’s unmanageable.
You have patches of pride here and there, appearing like pockets on your favorite cargo shorts, and it always felt to me growing up that each patch is a hurdle you cleared. You get yourself out of jams. It’s a thing, as deliberate and expert as the way you made mix-tapes with no space between tracks (and in an analog world no less). The pride is there, discrete, around you.
I worry that your self-esteem has faltered enough to cancel the balance.
I want you today on Mother’s Day to stretch at least the patch of pride that is about me. Stretch it for yourself though so that it covers more space. It is an achievement you have no choice but confidence about because there are receipts throughout my entire amazing life that reflect you. You did great work mothering. You provided for the need.
The only error you made is in assuming I no longer need you.
Because of course I will always need my mother, just like you need yours right now. God provides for the need some other way of course, but the initial one is still there, present.
Lean in, Mom. Celebrate Grandy. Need her. Miss her. And then seek glimpses of her instead of finding them. Hold on to the parts of her that you feel you failed to find in your character and try them on now. That’s only a feeling after all, she would say, and you have very little left to lose.
She would be right.
You continue to grow me.
You have worn me out. Your whimsy is non-negotiable. You have fought me. You have put everything on the line like it’s the epic finale and then forgotten the whole season. You have crusaded for life-changing absurdities to have whatever status quo you seek in the right now. But this is who you are. And you never vowed to be anyone else.
I am better for it.
And I support you. You are my mother. But you are also a beautiful human with a lot of vibration yet in that heart of yours, triple bypass notwithstanding. I want you to thrive.
Happy Mother’s Day.
I love you and I am always happy to say I am your son –
Jamal
P.S. Mom please do not hassle those hospital staffers about beer. You don’t need any and it is a big, obnoxious ask of a medical professional.