A Lost Love Letter to my Mother: I’m Afraid You Do Know Best
“You have been the perfect child until recently.”
My mother had mastered the art of saying the absolute wrong things to me, in reference to me, about me, suggestive of me, in my presence or otherwise, at the absolute wrong times. I knew and understood why she did this and, thus, excused her, sometimes. Pardoned or not, her words stuck. She is the beauty mark to the left of my nose: prominent, striking, yet invincible, always present.
For example, my mother went out of her way to tell the world that she never made me do chores, she never taught me to cook, she never passed down any how-to-be-domestic wisdom to her only daughter.
“I didn’t raise my daughter to be anyone’s wife,” she shared upon first meeting my boyfriend’s mother.
The comment “You have been the perfect child until recently” was something she sent in an email to me in March of 2009 after I told her that I had, against her wishes, taken a young pursuer up on his offer and was no longer single. This news came two weeks after she discovered that I had, again, against her advisement, taken a trip to the tattoo parlor and made a permanent decision in Latin at the nape of my neck.
“Well, now you’ll never be able to wear an elegant dress,” were her first words.
A tattoo and a boyfriend marked the primary blemishes in my faultless record. The former my mother came to accept; I could cover it with my hair. But her displeasure with the latter would resurface over and over again. It was a flaw she wouldn’t let me forget.
The first Sunday of the year 2012, my mother and I went to church together. It was my last time at my home church before I returned to my university in Pittsburgh to begin the last semester of undergrad. After service, a woman, a friend of the family, found me at the back of the sanctuary. She greeted my mother with a hug and turned to greet me by grabbing my left hand.
“No ring?” she asked, scanning the tell-all finger.
I forced a smile and shook my head, unsurprised that I was, again, being asked this question. You’re with a guy for an extended period of time and questions like these are inevitable — and, if you’re me, they’re annoying.
“But I thought you had a boyfriend,” she said.
“I do,” I responded.
“Same one, right?” she asked.
I nodded. Yes, for almost three years now.
At that point, my mother thought it necessary to interject.
“Oh, don’t worry,” she began. “He’s not the one.”
It wasn’t so much the fact that she said he wasn’t the one that made me upset; it’s not as if she’d been thrilled about my relationship from its start. It was the way in which she said it that made me feel almost insulted. The way she swatted her hand in the air as she said, “Oh, don’t worry.” The sureness in her voice as she declared, “He’s not the one.”
And then my mother walked off to finish up her duties as usher, leaving the woman and me to resume our conversation, though I couldn’t imagine that there was anything left to say.
“Well, you know,” the lady finally let go of my hand and shrugged, “mothers know these things.”
My mother became a mother at 15 years old. With just a decade and a half of time separating our births, I would like to say we had a Gilmore Girls-esque type relationship, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
She put it like this: “I’ve always been your parent, never been your friend.”
But the way my mother chose to parent stemmed from fear, ensuring her mistakes would never be repeated.
Books over boys, academics over anything else.
My schedule in high school was jam-packed with class, track-and-field practice and meets, choir practice, my part-time job, honors clubs and organizations. She had even gone so far as to joint-enroll me in a nearby college to get a jump start on my undergraduate gen-eds. Any free time I had was reserved for studying or sleeping.
I had a strict curfew, even on the weekends. Before I could be granted permission to go anywhere, my mother needed a full briefing — as if we were headed into battle — who would be there, what their social security numbers were, and what their parents did for a living. If I was a second late getting home, I’d regret it for months.
My 15th birthday was met with celebration and relief — honor roll again and no pregnancy.
My 16th birthday was met with celebration and relief — honor roll again and no pregnancy.
My 17th birthday was met with all those things and anticipation — four more months until graduation, and freedom.
My motivation for my life’s outlook back then had always started and ended with what I didn’t want for myself. Mind you, that motivation lived with me, and she reminded me of what my life could be if I didn’t “make good decisions, Sierra” — a coined phrase of hers. It was a lot of pressure for my formative years, adolescence, and beyond. But it worked.
When I left home, I could still hear my mother’s voice at every turn, from buying groceries to choosing classes to managing my love life: “Make good decisions, Sierra.”
Nate, my first real boyfriend, was a scholar-athlete, brains and brawn. We met when he had come to Pitt on academic scholarship as a member of the football team. He made me double over with laughter, and he kept my attention with thoughtful conversation. We became good friends, then we became more.
He had dreams of becoming a future educator of America, he was involved in mentoring at-risk youth, he was well-traveled. A southern gentleman with a big heart and credentials to boot. Any woman would feel lucky to have him.
Well, any woman except me. My mother taught me that I am the prize.
I must also point out that we were, sometimes, on two different pages, Nate and I. We were raised in two totally different atmospheres with very different ideals instilled in us. I was raised to be independent, to worry about myself first. He was raised in a familial atmosphere, taught to take care of everyone else before himself.
What I was missing, he had in abundance, and vice versa. And so, we found each other in that middle ground and let the puzzle pieces align themselves. The grooves didn’t match up 100 percent, but I never felt we were at a place to make sure they did. Entering my 20s, marriage, kids, all that good stuff was lightyears down the road for me. All I wanted to do was focus on my goals and make sure that I was at a place to move forward with such abstractions.
But somehow, as the months and years continued into my relationship with Nate, the extra stuff kept coming up. To be fair, I could imagine this was what couples talked about as they approached multi-year milestones together. But to also be fair, my mother didn’t raise me to be anyone’s wife.
Let’s set the scene: It’s a Sunday night in October, and Nate and I are texting, a form of communication we are often reduced to as we are now in a long-distance relationship. He had enlisted in the U.S. Army, a choice made, in part, because he was 21 years old and still finding himself. This was something I absolutely couldn’t relate to. I had left home at 17 years old with an overwhelming understanding of myself, and the kind of ambition you find in people who refuse to end up like their parents. I had a plan, a solid one; no room for error.
“I feel like the stuff I’ve been preaching to you goes in one ear and out the other,” Nate writes. “Cuz it’s not who you are.”
Nate is on his American Dream kick again. You know the one: the big house, the white picket fence, the two kids, the Labrador Retriever. He wants the wife who goes along with that dream. She probably has dinner ready for him by the time he comes home. She probably has the option to work but doesn’t, because family is more important. She and I probably have nothing in common.
“It’s not who I am at all,” I respond. “I’ve never tried to change you to fit my lifestyle & my ideals. If I did, you wouldn’t be you anymore.”
“Someday, it won’t just be us,” he writes back. “I’m talking about a family, babygirl…my #1 dream.”
I hesitate to text him back. If that is truly his number one dream, we are in trouble. My number one dream is to make an impact on the world around me, to use my talents to do my part in overcoming society’s most pressing problems.
“And I know you’re more than that,” he continues. “I see it every day we talk. You are brilliant. You are special. You are magnificent. You are yourself.”
But, he adds, when he asked me to be his girlfriend, brilliant, special, magnificent me was only part of what he saw.
“I also saw the potential mother of my kids and wife,” he writes. “I never see it as just us. You know that. You know how I am.”
Yes, we are in trouble.
“Nate…I keep trying to explain to you, I don’t want to get married or have kids,” I write. “But if that’s what makes you happy, who am I to not want to give that to you in the future?”
Strong emphasis on “in the future.”
“See…It’s that ‘I don’t’ at the beginning of that statement that gets me every time,” he responds. “It’s like you feel obligated.”
“Well, it’s true,” I write back. “I don’t.”
The conversation ends, and with the finality of my declaration, something different, something foreign finds itself unfolding within the depths of my intuition — fear. For the first time, I can see it; perhaps it’s just taken time to be revealed by the audacity to find my own way and potentially fail.
I’m afraid that my mother is right; I’m afraid he’s not the one.
This essay was first written as a draft in 2012. It was discovered again seven years later and given new life. It is being published now as a nod to my favorite girl on the planet, my mom.
As the saying goes, Mother knows best.
Names have been changed to maintain confidentiality.
