51 50 by Kristen McGuiness

51 50 by Kristen McGuiness

Author:Kristen McGuiness
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Published: 2010-09-15T04:00:00+00:00


26

Date Twenty-Six: My Momma’s Still My Biggest Fan

I once asked my former sponsor Louise how I can be in a healthy relationship when I’ve never seen one up close. She reminded me that I have my mom and her boyfriend Raymond as an example, and she is right. My mom was single my whole life. She never dated. There were never any strange men coming in and out of the house. She had her work to which she was a slave, and she had me. Nana, on the other hand, retired from men at the age of fifty. Of course, by that point, she had been married four times. The last of which was a sham marriage in the late seventies to my uncle Vic’s boyfriend. They exchanged vows, rings, and she took his last name, but it was only so he could get a tax break, and she could fly for free on Delta because he was a pilot with the airline. He later died of AIDS in the eighties, but my grandmother still has his surname. I find it incredibly funny that it will be his name that goes on her tombstone—a con even in the afterlife. But my mother is a different story.

When my father was arrested and sent away, my mom didn’t go on a drinking binge, she didn’t have a nervous breakdown, she didn’t throw dramatic tantrums, as I know I would have done. She got a job, she went back to school, and she started working at the company where she still works twenty-five years later. And dating, well, there was no room for that. So I got used to it being just my mom and me, with my grandmother as the third member of the triumvirate. When I was in college, my mom was transferred to her company’s New York office just so she could be closer to me while I went to school. We left Nana behind, and the two of us learned to love New York City together. My mom went back for her bachelor’s degree at NYU when I was in college myself. And though I might be the more philosophical, my mom was the one to graduate with honors. Because she does things the right way.

And then in 2002, I decided to leave New York. I think sometimes people can’t be open to love until it doesn’t look like there are any other options left. Until there is space in the heart, and time in the schedule, to make room for another.

With school out of the way, her job not taking up all of her time anymore, and her daughter and only friend preparing to move to the other side of the country, my mother, on my uncle Vic’s urging, asked out the guy in her building’s gym she had been eyeing for quite some time. And that guy was Raymond. Raymond is my mom’s first boyfriend. They make dinner together and go to the movies. They go on vacations and play golf every time the weather’s good.



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.