Mom (14 page)

Eileen Cohen:
My mom worked three jobs, so all the household tasks happened on the weekend. My brothers and I would be sleeping, and she would be in the supermarket—early, early, early. She’d drag all the groceries up the steps. We were kinda rousing out of the bed, and we would try to help her. But being a traditional Jewish mother, she wasn’t interested. She would say, “The horse is here”—she being the horse. “The horse can work from morning till night. My big lump”—that was Jeffrey—“my little lump”—that was Mark—“and my middle lump”—that was me. “Go back to bed, my three little lumps, because the horse is here!” I guess it was typical Jewish guilt. And that went on for years.

It was impossible not to fall in love with her. It was
impossible
. Children fell in love with her; some kids would go over to her and say, “Could you take me home and be my grandma?” They just absolutely loved her.

Jamie Roy:
She reminds me a lot of you—and I fell in love with you. The story that’s always amazed me is the time you were in the Caribbean and you got dragged out to sea.

Eileen:
I had a job with a pacemaker company, and one of the sales reps asked me if I wanted to go on vacation. He said, “We’re gonna get a sailboat, a big one, and we’re gonna sail in the Caribbean.” And I said, “Count me in! Absolutely.” But the problem was, I didn’t know how to swim.

About a week before the vacation, I said to a lifeguard, “I’m going on vacation in the Caribbean. I don’t know how to swim—can you teach me?” He looked at me and said, “There’s no way I can do this in a week—how about if I just teach you how to tread water?” I said, “Fine, teach me how to do that.” So he did.

We were on this great boat, sailing, and I decided to jump in the water. I felt very confident because I had flippers on and it was salt water, so I was very buoyant. I thought I would go exploring. So I did—and I was sucked out into the ocean. I yelled, but there was huge wind, and they couldn’t hear me. I yelled, “Help me! Help me! Help me!” I was in the ocean by myself, and the boat where I had originally jumped in was a distant, distant vision.

I think it was the one time in my life that I didn’t analyze or think. I was just on automatic pilot. And my mother was with me the entire time. I heard her from the moment I realized that I couldn’t get back. Every time I started panicking, I heard her say to me, “You’re my special girl. Don’t worry, you can do this. You’ve done things that you thought were hard before. Remember when you didn’t know how to skip, and I taught you how to skip? You were so upset. Hang in there!”

One of my vacationmates called my mother and father to say that I’m missing at sea, presumed dead, because the harbormaster said, “If she doesn’t know how to swim, it’s impossible she could last out there.” So my father answered, and he said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about—you took her away alive; you better bring her back exactly like that! I’m not interested in anything else that you have to say.”

When I was in the ocean, I saw in the distance a little piece of land. I’ve seen people swim; I knew you had to use your arms and kick your legs. So I kind of did that until I was finally able to get to that piece of land. It was deserted, but the next day, I had a plan: to sit on one of the rocks that jutted out into the ocean, take the ribbon out of my hair, put it on a stick, and sit and wait there till a boat came by, and try to get their attention. Which is exactly what happened.

When I was brought back to my friends, I called my mom and my dad from the harbor to tell them that I was okay, and my mother said, “Listen, I realize you’re twenty-eight years old, but this vacation’s over as far as I’m concerned. I’m sending your brother down to get you.” She sent Mark down, and when I met him at the airport, he said, “Mom stayed up the whole night. She was talking to you. She paced back and forth saying, ‘You’re my special girl.You can do this.You’re strong.’”
Exactly
what I heard while treading water.

I feel it was really an honor and a privilege to be her child, I really do. In her eyes, there were only three children in the entire world: there were the three of us, and then everyone else was underneath. And it wasn’t that she didn’t really love everybody else, because she’d stop and look at every child and talk to every mother. But
her
children—no one could compare.

She made you feel loved, adored, cherished, and
safe
.

Robert Madden:
I grew up in south central Mississippi. My mom and dad were both country people, and the gifts that they gave me are astounding to me today. I grew up in a country environment: I laugh about not wearing shoes until I went to school—it was pretty true. We would go visit my grandmother and drive a mile down a country road, through the cattle guard, and down behind cornfields to get to her house. I thought everyone grew up like we did.

I woke up every morning of my life, from the time I started school until I finished high school, to my mother saying, “Robert Lynn, Robert Lynn, wake up, honey! Breakfast is on the table!” She’d get up every morning, she’d make breakfast, and when I’d come home from school in the afternoon, there was always something fresh baked. Then I’d do my homework, and she’d send us out to play. Then at six or six-thirty, dinner was on the table, from scratch. I took all that for granted growing up. I went to pick up a friend to take him to school one morning—his mother was still in bed, and there were vodka bottles all over his dining room table, and she was screaming, “Get your own breakfast!” And I was like, “Is this normal?” And he’s like, “Oh yeah, totally normal for me.”

My mom was called the Bicycle Lady when I was a kid because she rode eighteen miles on her bike every day. It didn’t matter if it was raining or whatever, she would put on her poncho, and she’d take off on her bike. I just loved being with her. She was an amazing woman.
Stubborn
. I got a double dose of that.

My mother was Catholic and my father was Southern Baptist, and in the 1950s it was unheard of that they would get married. My dad was a southern gentleman to his core, a country southern gentleman. And he loved his kids and his family more than anything—but he loved my mother most. That’s one of the things that for me is so beautiful still—the love that they shared. He loved Hank Williams and Patsy Cline, and I can still see him and my mom dancing in the living room when they didn’t think anybody was watching. My mom passed away from cancer in October of 2006, and six months later my father died of a broken heart—he even told his doctor that’s what was wrong with him. The power of their love was amazing. They were a sassy, spicy, beautiful, exciting, vibrant couple. Their life together was whole and beautiful.

I’d come out to my parents when I was ten: I told them that I was going to marry a man when I grew up. But that was a kind of childhood question—I was constantly asking questions of the nature of things, and Mother would say, “Ask the priest, honey—I don’t know. I don’t know who God’s mother is. I don’t know where the edge of the universe is. . . . I don’t know.”

My mother had always told me, “We can handle anything as a family as long as you tell us first. I don’t want to hear about it through the grapevine.” So when I decided to start living openly gay, I told them. My father told me, “I’ve known since you were a little boy. It doesn’t matter to me if you spend your life with a man or with a woman, as long as you make it something you can hold your head up about.” I was astounded. It was just such open, beautiful acceptance. Every year after that he would just tell me how proud he was of me and the way that I lived my life.

My mother took some time, because she thought it was her fault—she felt guilty about it. My grandmother’s passing is what really stimulated her to call me, because my grandma had said, “You’re missing out on a beautiful relationship with Robert Lynn because you can’t accept this about him. He’s Robert Lynn. He’s still the same person you raised and that we all grew up with.” My grandmother loved me very much, and she and my mom and I were sort of this triangle of strength in the family. So my mother came around.

I remember once I went home to visit my mom and dad. My mom and I used to have these really incredible conversations after everyone else went to bed. This particular night she asked me if I would stay up with her, and then she just started asking me all these questions: “What was sex like between two men?” All that kind of stuff. She said, “If you’re embarrassed then you don’t need to answer.” And I said, “I’m not embarrassed. I’m just shocked you would ask me.” And she was like, “I want to know. I’ve been out of your life too long, and I want to know.” So I explained to her, and she sat there with a straight face. Afterwards she just went, “Hmm, curious.”

The last ten years, I made a point to spend as much time with her as I could. A lot of times I would go when I knew none of my siblings would be there, so I could be alone with my parents. I wouldn’t trade those times for anything in the world. I could go there and just get all that sustenance and all that joy and love and acceptance.

When my mother was passing, she put her hand on my face and she said, “You are so precious. I love you.” I said, “I love you too, Mom.” And she goes, “No, I mean
unconditionally
.” It was the greatest gift . . . it was just the greatest gift she could have given me.

I lost both my parents this past year, six months apart. I know I’ll get through it because you’re with me, but some days I just feel like I can’t breathe, you know? But I do feel them all around me.

When my father was passing he used to say that he could see my mother in the room, that she was there. “Don’t you see her?” he’d say. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

TOM KURTHY (
left
) AND ROBERT MADDEN (
right
)

Hilory Boucher:
Skip and I were classmates at Boston University. He was cute, and everybody liked him. We just sort of got together and double-dated with this girl in my dorm and a friend of his. His friend had a car, so we sat in the backseat, and after we’d go bowling and get ice cream, we’d park the car and neck.

We went to babysit for his sister’s child in their apartment. We planned this whole thing—this was going to be
it
. I don’t think he had any more experience than I did. It was not very romantic, and we were both embarrassed. Finally, the deed was accomplished, and we talked about, “Oh, could I get pregnant?” In your mind, you just think,
No, not me. God’s going to take care of me—I’m going to get away with this
.

We had broken for summer vacation, and I went home with my family in Connecticut. I told my mother, “I didn’t get my friend.” She said, “Well you certainly couldn’t be pregnant, could you?” I said, “No, no! Not me, no!” Totally in denial, until finally she decided I should see the doctor. Our family doctor had delivered my brothers and sisters, had set broken bones, pierced my
ears
for heaven sakes—everything—so this is the man who examined me, the first time I’d ever been examined that way, and he said to me, “You’re pregnant.Would you like me to tell your mother, or do you want to tell your mother?” I said to him, “I can’t tell my mother.” Fortunately, he did. My mother was holding back tears, just
mortified
. She said nothing to me until we were in the car, and then she said, “I’m going to have to let your father know this.” So that was the day of reckoning.

My father was a man who expected a certain respect from us, I think even more than love. We were raised Roman Catholic. We attended Mass every Sunday and went to religious instruction. In high school I was never one of the kids who went out drinking—I just always wanted to be good. Well, now I’d done something that was
totally
out of the realm of what was expected of me.