Mother. That’s what my brother and I call her. It’s funner to say than “mom” and she gets a kick out of it. We can just tell. Mother is easy to read like that, at least for someone who was raised by her. I always felt like Mother could be married to Johnny Depp by now and sipping mimosas on some pretty island deserving of her presence had she not been dealt the nearly impossible task of raising two goofy, hard-headed boys by herself. Throughout my 22 years of life I’ve wondered from time to time if she regrets having to raise two boys that put her through hell instead of following Robert Smith and the Cure around the country like I know she dreamt of. (Side note, one time years ago Mother managed to snake her way to the front of the crowd at a Cure concert and proceeded to latch onto Robert Smith’s hand with the strength of a silverback gorilla and I’m pretty sure she hasn’t washed her hand since). But with all my years of experience reading her I’ve never once felt like she wouldn’t push a tour bus full of her 1980s-90s music crushes off a cliff for my brother and I. Having been a scared, emotionally disturbed child, imagine what that did for my confidence to know that Mother would pick us over Sebastian Bach in his tight leather pants.
At times it was hard for Mother to provide for us on her own and sometimes my brother and I would walk home from school to find notes from the city on our door and our power turned off. Eventually though Mother caught a break and in 2007 she got her dream job working at this now defunct recording studio called Radio Star Studios in our hometown in far, far northern California. She got to spend her days around musicians and that year she even got sent to the Coachella music festival to work at a booth put on by the studio. She would come back from work talking about all the bands that were at the studio recording. She would talk about how she was paling around with aspiring rockstars and musicians and she would even take us to the studio sometimes because she was so proud of being there.
She worked there for about a year in total and in that year it was like everything had finally and deservedly started looking up for her. Me and my brother got our first look at what somebody living their dream looked like and I took a lot from that. Eventually and ominously the economic collapse came around 2008, followed by the layoffs for people and Mother was one of the unlucky many that lost their jobs. As a kid I thought that the “universe” would somehow let Mother keep her job since it was her DREAM job but unfortunately reality doesn’t bend to the will of a 12 year old’s hopeful naivety. She had scratched and clawed as a single parent trying to stay afloat for years and right as the stars finally began to align for her, she was left scrambling to find a job so that she wouldn’t sink further into debt.
But in her typical fashion Mother rose to the occasion by getting three, count ‘em, three jobs. In a time where hard working people were doing anything to find one job Mother somehow found and took on three. During that time she worked part-time at the Coca Cola factory 10 miles away, then she would drive to a town 30 miles away to work her second part time job at a social services office. She didn’t talk much about her third job so I wasn’t sure exactly what it was or when the hell she had time for it.
When I was in high school my friends would pick me and my brother up and we would drive around our tiny town of 3000 people to pass the time on weekend nights. On one of these nights we were driving downtown at around midnight and as we drove by the local bank, with its lights still on, I saw Mother on the inside with a vacuum. My heart sort of sank when I saw her cleaning at midnight and later figured out that her third job was doing custodial work, cleaning the local churches and the local bank on weekend nights. After that night I started going with her at midnight to the churches to keep her company and help her clean so that she wouldn’t have to be alone. I think it meant a lot to her.
Most times I wonder if I even deserve the #1 ranked Mother in the world because I’m not Prince, I didn’t star in “Purple Rain”, and I’m not on track to be a doctor or something else that would allow her to retire early and rest her bones like she’s deserved for years. I’m a dreamer on an unclear path with an inclination to slip into existential meltdowns more than I’d ever admit. Sometimes I give into my self-destruction and I end up sitting alone at a penny slot machine in a casino spending money I’m lucky to have and can’t afford to blow while I text Mother and lie about where I’m at and what I’m doing so she doesn’t worry. But despite all the things about myself I sit up at night desperately, desperately wishing to change, Mother still thinks I’m cool and that’s my most prized commodity: Mother’s love and support. As guilty as I feel sometimes believing I’m not the son she deserves, she still believes my brother and I are the sun, as cheesy and that sounds.
