Short-Term Mother, Long-Term Effects
A very biased portrait of the best mom in the world
Elsa was the middle child out of five. Possibly due to middle child syndrome, she was great at everything she put her mind to growing up. She learned how to cook and knit purely from observing my grandmother. She could play cards and tell jokes like kids years ahead of her. She was always top of her class and paid her way through University with merit scholarships and part-time jobs.
In 1988, when Elsa was 30, she gave birth to me, then at 33, she gave birth to my sister. This was considered an old age to have a child in those days in Portugal. Yet, now that I’m 33 myself, I can’t believe how mature and wise my mother was at my age.
Even though my mom and dad were technically a married couple, my father wasn’t around much during our childhood. His job was over 300km away from where we lived, and we only saw him once every few months. So my mother raised us by herself while holding a University professor job and doing the household chores. She never complained.
When I was 10, my mother developed a mysterious illness. I’d sometimes hear her groaning at night and find her in bed contorting in excruciating pain. Her life became like an episode of the series House, M.D.: she was in and out of the hospital, poked and prodded, tested and treated for numerous diseases, to no avail. The doctors couldn’t figure out what was causing her symptoms. It wasn’t cancer, it wasn’t a rare tropical virus she’d caught on a trip, it wasn’t anything they’d ever heard of.
For my sister and me, this became the new normal. Sometimes our mother would stay in the hospital for months, and we’d only see her every few days during visiting hours. Her healthy glow started to fade.
“I have the supermodel look,” she’d joke, pointing at the bones showing through her skin. She looked like one of those starving children on TV commercials fundraising for charity.
The adults around me didn’t explain what was going on, so I naturally assumed it was nothing too serious. It was just a matter of time until the doctors checked every disease and finally found whatever was wrong. Then they’d cure my mom, and life would go back to the way it was supposed to be.
One afternoon, my sister and I were watching TV at our grandparent’s country house. It was the Pokémon episode Bye Bye Butterfree. I heard the front door slam, and my dad burst through the living room. He looked at us with bloodshot eyes, hesitating for a second.
“Mom died,” he said, almost inaudibly.
My head dropped into my hands. The world stopped making sense.
In the corner of my eye, I saw a swarm of butterfly-like Pokémon creatures flying up to the sky on the tiny square screen of the TV. They were taking my mother with them.
To this day, we don’t know what my mother was suffering from. All we know is that, at age 43, after two years of struggling with whatever it was, she died in a hospital bed.
I was 12, and the most important person in my life no longer existed.
On that day, everything I remembered my mom ever saying to me became etched in the folds of my brain, forever preserved in stone like the teachings of a messiah.
I remember that, ever since I started to understand language, my mom taught me about penises and vaginas and sperm and egg cells. She never gave me any bullshit about the birds, the bees, or baby-delivery storks. She always referred to sex as making love and as a natural part of life.
She went to school in the 60s and 70s, when Portugal was under a dictatorial regime. Teachers were not allowed to mention sex or even animal reproduction in the classroom. My mom told me that the first time she read about the subject was in a Biology book at University.
So she took it upon herself to make sure my sister and I didn’t think of sex as shameful or dirty or taboo. It was a challenging task even when I was growing up in the 90s, as I was constantly bombarded with the idea that intercourse makes a woman impure and undesirable.
Talking about sex with my mom was so common that I never thought of it as a big deal. I could trust that she’d tell me the truth without judging me for being curious.
“Mom, I heard something at school, but I can’t believe it,” I told her once around age 9. “One of my classmates says that some women lick men’s penises. Is that true?”
“Well, yes, that’s true. Lots of people like having their genitals licked. It’s normal.”
“Yuuuck!”
“If you’re comfortable with the other person, it’s not yucky. Everyone likes different things when making love, and that’s OK.”
It was around that same age that I started to masturbate. I understood that there was something I was supposed to be striving for, called an orgasm, but I didn’t understand what it was exactly.
“Mom, what’s an orgasm?”
She took a few seconds before answering, “It’s when you feel this big burst of energy in your vagina.”
Her description felt too specific to be made up, so I knew she’d had an orgasm before. And from that description, I knew I’d never had one myself. I lived for years in the frustration of knowing that I hadn’t had an orgasm, no matter how hard I tried. However, that magical moment finally came at age 27. And because of my mom’s words, I knew that it was the real deal.
I remember that, in the highly Catholic country of Portugal, my mom refused to succumb to the pressure to baptize my sister and me. She was raised Catholic but grew into an atheist, so she didn’t want to be a hypocrite.
“I know many Portuguese people who don’t believe in God yet will marry through the church and baptize their kids,” she’d say. “Just to keep the rest of the family happy. It’s all pretend, and that’s not who I am.”
That meant that I was usually the only kid in my class who hadn’t been baptized through the Catholic Church. As children will naturally find any point of difference between you and them as an excuse to tease and bully, I didn’t have a great time.
“Pleeeease, mom!” I’d beg on a regular basis. “Pleeeease let me get baptized and go to Sunday school like everyone else!”
She wouldn’t budge on her decision, but she also wouldn’t quite explain to me why God wouldn’t be real or why the Catholic Church wouldn’t be THE religion to be in.
“If God isn’t real,” I asked her once. “Then how come everybody else believes in it?”
She answered me with a quote that I can’t remember who she attributed to.
“It wasn’t God who invented Man. It was Man who invented God.”
It was such a simple, beautiful argument against the existence of God. Even though I wanted to believe in it so badly, that sentence made something click in my brain. It turned me irrevocably into an atheist, and proud of it.
I remember that when I was 3, my mom gave me a toy truck for Christmas after my explicit instructions for her to get me a Barbie. She never bought me princess stuff or tiaras, and I hated her for it.
Now, so many years later, I appreciate how she tried to make me more than the cultural norms defined for my gender.
I remember one day, when I was 5, we went to the cafe down the street from our home. As my mother ordered her usual espresso, I begged for a Kinder Surprise Egg.
“I could buy you an egg today,” she said. “But if you’re patient and wait for one week, I’ll save up the money to buy you a LEGO set instead.”
Her logic added up. I agreed and waited for a week, controlling my chocolate-craving impulses. By giving up on a momentary pleasure, I was rewarded with a Beach House LEGO set that brought me joy for years to come.
It was my first lesson on saving money.
I remember that once when I was around 8 years old, I stole some coins from my mother’s purse. It wasn’t a lot, but enough to buy a toy I really wanted.
“Oh, what do you have there?” she asked when she saw me counting the coins in my wallet.
“It’s money I saved up,” I lied, my voice shaking.
“Really? Wow, that’s a lot of money!” she said with a smile.
“I’ve been saving for some time.”
“You know what you could do with it?” she continued. “You could buy us both a drink and a snack at the cafe.”
“Umm…”
I couldn’t come up with a reason not to. So, in the end, I agreed to use the money I stole from my mom for something that usually my mom would have paid for anyway.
Looking back at this moment, I’m pretty sure she knew what I’d done. But instead of confronting me as a thief, she chose to show me that crime doesn’t always pay.
I remember one evening, during my mom’s illness, she and I were sitting in our living room alone watching TV. She had just spent several hours rolling over in bed in agony.
“Sometimes the pain is so bad that I wonder if it wouldn’t be easier to die,” she confessed. “Don’t worry, I don’t really want to die,” she reassured me, looking at my stunned face. “It’s just a thought that comes to my head sometimes.”
I remember that the last time my family visited my mother at the hospital before she died, I decided not to go. I didn’t think it was important.
It hurts badly every time I think of the years I was robbed of the most amazing role model I’ve ever had. She fought her way against society to raise me as an independent thinker. She answered my questions with truth and empathy. She led by example.
And even though my time with her was cut short, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
