Member-only story
Mother's Day 2025
She Was Not Our Mother, But She Mothered Us
Here's to all the women who are not mothers who keep us safe
My cousin Dee-Dee was not my mother, but she had a profound influence on my childhood and life. She did not birth me, but loved me and my siblings as her own.
Fighting For Me
It was 5:00 a.m. on a weekday. I walked from my mother's house to the Stoney Island bus stop. This was my routine every morning as I worked part-time at a nursing home on the West Side under the table, drawing blood and collecting mucus, pus, feces, and urine from patients.
They paid me under the table in cash. $40 a day, as they were short-staffed and no one wanted to be the one waking up the Seniors first thing in the morning. After I finished working for them, I went to my full-time job at the hospital.
To get to the bus stop, I walked past a dark alley. If she were home, Dee-Dee would often get up and watch me walk down to the bus stop, frequently claiming she could not sleep. She didn't know I could hear the alarm clock ringing in her room. Dee-Dee would stand on the porch smoking a cigarette and watch me as I walked to the corner.
