she

Something I feel a little bit foolish admitting is that when I moved from Minnesota to Kentucky to go to graduate school, I cried on the phone to my mom every single day for a month straight. I am not lying. You can verify it with her.

I cried because I lived alone and was unbearably lonely, because grad school was hard, so much harder than I'd expected, because within the first two weeks of class I was assigned to read about 900 pages of impenetrable anthropological theory, almost none of which I cared about. I cried because I kept trying to make friends but wasn't having any success, cried because the South was supposed to be slow-paced and hospitable but nobody had told that to anyone I was interacting with, and cried because everybody in my grad program seemed ultra-intelligent, ultra-cool, and was ultra-laughing at clever jokes I didn't get.

It wasn't fun or enriching or a colorful new page in my life. It was hell.

What I'd do is handle it as best I could everyday until I couldn't anymore, and then I'd phone up my mom, whose name is Luanne and who is adventurous at her core, though I think sometimes she doesn't believe that about herself anymore. She'd listen to me cry for 30 minutes without interruption. That whole month, she just let me cry.

Then she'd tell me something wise, or comforting, or uncomfortably challenging. Or something weird, which would make me pause and laugh, and that proved as helpful as anything. I'd say, "I'm too stupid!", and she just kept replying calmly: "No. You're not." I always ended up believing her.

Then I'd set the phone down, breathe deeply, carefully mop up the filmy greenish string of snot connecting the tip of my nose to the top of my desk, and microwave myself a bowl of sweet corn from the freezer section of the supermarket, because that's about all I was eating at that time, don't ask me why. This was before I discovered corn is a starch, not a vegetable.

I'd take yet another crack at Foucault, whom I hated then and still do*, climb into my single bed, glance out over my small studio apartment and whisper good night to no one. Then I'd do it all over again the next day. For a month straight, that's what I did.

What I did not do is quit grad school or move away from Kentucky. After that ghastly period of adjustment, both things - my studies and my new state - endeared themselves to me (especially Kentucky, which I grew to love). The simple truth is that sticking with them "melhorar-ed" my life, as you'd say in Portuguese; that is, improved, made better, enhanced it. As journeying past the boulder in the road nearly always does.

I'd like to dedicate all that resulting added-goodness in my life to my mom, whose birthday is today. If there hadn't been a first month survived with her support, there wouldn't have been a second. Or a 24th, as it eventually played out, with a degree at the end.

My mom has done that, patiently borne me up, more times than I can recount: from across the miles of more cities, more continents, in the midst of more personal crises, through more situations, prolonged and grim, which threatened to drown me, their dark waves having rolled o'er the top of me. These situations involved everything from education, babies, spirituality heartbreak, abortion, mean bosses, arthritis, culture shock, and loneliness - yes, always loneliness. My personal demon.

Once I called her, hysterical, at 11 PM and she stepped off a plane, having traveled a thousand miles in my direction, by 6 AM the next morning.

For as long as I can remember, she has had dreams about me - usually about twice a year - in which I am being attacked by a gang of men, probably burly mustachioed rapists, and she wakes up in the middle of the night softly crying, wanting to save me. She's not unduly anxious, but these dreams shake her up a lot and she spends the rest of the night lying in bed, sleepless and praying for me. It's not the sort of thing I would come up with on my own, but since it happens anyways, well - it means a lot to me. Just knowing it makes my heart feel soft and tender, amazed at the love she has for me, like a faucet that keeps overflowing.

I live my life like I don't need her and my dad, in terms of the career and life decisions I make, always moving to far and distant places, far and distant lives; but none of us believe that for a second. I'm only able to make those decisions because I do have her.

She let me convert her to a third-party candidate way of thinking, politically and socially.

She taught me, by example, that the surest way to make people laugh is to not care if you look stupid. Her sense of humor is silly and lovable.

When I was only 8 and our family was immersed in a very traditional and rigid theological environment, she privately told me that I could be anything I wanted, even a pastor if I wanted, which was tantamount to heresy in that particular milieu. I never forgot it. I loved it. I respected faith and the church, as she did, and as it happened I didn't want to be a pastor. She's always saying that I open our family up to new ways of thinking, but really, she's the one who put it in me first. She just forgot. She often brings our family into new, good things.

with my sister's in-laws, in China

The summer before my eighth grade year, she took me on my first Boundary Water's canoe trip up north, near to Canada. It was just her, me, a male special ed teacher, and about five of her senior high EBD students (Emotional Behavioral Disordered, though this is maybe an outdated diagnosis now), some occasionally volatile teenagers. You could tell my mom genuinely liked them, loved giving them this chance to get out for a change. She got REI to donate free gear for our rag-tag troop (including some expensive men's hiking boots which had been returned, the tag explained, because the previous owner complained of "headaches when in the presence of the boots"). During our trip, it rained, we saw shooting stars, roasted wieners, some people snuck cigarettes, possibly pot, folks told ghost stories, and we all went cliff-jumping, all of us. It was a seriously fun trip.

My mom and I are close, but sometimes she complains that I don't tell her anything, "what's on the inside". And I don't, often. Daughters need space from their mothers too.

But when the rubber hits the road, she is who I dial. I think you can tell how much I respect and look up to her.

I love you Mom. Happy birthday.

In yellow (with 3 of her 4 sisters and my grandma); and with Michael

* He once wrote a single sentence that dragged on for three pages. I know he's "brilliant", but that's stupid. 35 words in, I was completely lost. I have no respect for that.