Halloween Was Her Birthday
My mother’s birthday was on the 31st of October. If she were alive, she’d be seventy-seven. She died in early January 2004, twenty-six days before my birthday.
Do I miss her? I’m never sure how to respond to that question. I loved her. However, I didn’t have that special bond some gay men have with their mothers. I was five the first time I was made aware that some assumed I was her younger brother because I resembled her. But we were never close. She was never my confidante. I didn’t desire to be around her after graduating high school. I used to joke that I didn’t go to college, I ran away there. That was mostly because of my contentious relationship with my stepfather.
I’d already learned to block the pain of being ignored when someone was in her life.
My mother didn’t become beautiful to me until after she died. My sister found a photo taken on my mother and stepfather’s wedding day in mid-June 1979. Each time I looked at her face, I saw myself in the shape of her eyes and grin. With a few alterations, my face could be placed on her shapely body, sheathed that day in a powder blue wraparound dress. She looked how she usually appears in my memories. She often said she was grateful none of her children got her thin hair. It was why she wore an afro wig during the 1970s. She could never get hers to be that voluminous.
I didn’t remember the photo, but I recalled the day. Two hours before it was taken was the first time I smelled alcohol oozing from my stepfather’s pores. And saw his dislike of me when he glared at me before focusing back on the road. They’d just picked me and my three-year-old brother up from the babysitter in South Phoenix, Arizona.
My mother turned around in the passenger seat and asked, “What do you think about Mama getting married?”
“To him?”
“Who else?”
I shrugged. “Sure.”
Her new boyfriend was just another guy who wasn’t there for me. Like my brother’s father before him. I’d already learned to block the pain of being ignored when someone was in her life.
Paul was driving us northbound on Seventh Avenue when he looked at me in the rearview mirror and said, “I know you. You’re the type who thinks he’s better than everyone. I can tell by the way you talk.” The blood vessels in his eyes scared me, but I didn’t know what he meant. I was nine. So, I kept bouncing on the back seat as I told my mother about my day. I was happy. It was Friday, and I was on summer break.
When he pulled up in front of our apartment, I waited for my mother to get out before pushing the front seat forward and jumping out. I was glad to be home. Racing inside, I changed out of my school clothes into a T-shirt and a pair of shorts. Then I ran back into the living room and fell onto the floor in front of the television.
“What are you doing?” my mother asked.
“I’m going to watch cartoons.”
“Didn’t you see the clothes on the bed? I’m getting married this evening. Go get ready.”
I was stunned. Didn’t she just tell me about it? According to what I’d seen on TV, there was usually a period of a few months before the big day. Plus, it was my brother’s birthday. Why would they get married on his day?
An hour later, we arrived in front of a house with a nice-looking lawn. I was told it was Paul’s parents. As we piled out of the car, my aunt’s 1968 red Ford Mustang screeched up behind us. I was happy to see her. But she didn’t seem glad to be there. My mother went to her.
I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I could tell my aunt was upset. Her long, thick hair was styled as if she was ready to be seen. But she wouldn’t get out of her car. Like me, she probably just found out about the wedding. She handed my mother a gift through the window before pulling away. I was sad to see her go.
We were surrounded by a bunch of strangers when we entered the house. An elderly couple came up to me and introduced themselves as Nana and Papa. Then, two younger couples followed. The first was Paul’s younger brother and his wife. The second was his older sister and her husband. I liked the sister’s smile but felt uncomfortable when she told me to call her and her husband, Aunt Pat, and Uncle Alan. Why? I didn’t know them. I assumed the kids running around, who were my age and younger, were the new cousins I’d get.
I wanted to cry, nervous because every person knew who I was. They acted as if we were already a family. I’d never been told anything about them.
When my sister called me at two on the morning of 2 January 2004 in Los Angeles, California, I cried when she told me our mother was gone. It wasn’t necessarily a surprise. Mama stopped taking care of herself after my stepfather died from alcoholism in the Arizona heat in late June 1999.
But my tears didn’t come from the loss. They came from hearing the sadness in my sister’s voice. She was twenty-three, our brother was twenty-seven, and our youngest sister was fifteen. My brother’s dad died when he was sixteen. My siblings were orphans.
It’s possible I was too. But I didn’t know my father. A fact that was shrouded in mystery. The last time I asked about him, my mother grabbed my hand and recounted the story she first told when I was seven.
“Your father and I met when he was stationed at Luke Air Force Base. He was a lot older than me. When I found out I was having you, I also discovered he was married. I didn’t want to be the reason someone’s marriage ended. So, I never told him. But I hope you find him one day.”
My mother then recited the name that was as generic as John Doe. Making it impossible to find anything on him. It was the first time I allowed myself to believe she was lying. I didn’t know what, but something was missing from her story.
The last time I cried about my mother was at her funeral. It was when my aunt stood and shared a funny story. Like everyone in the church, I laughed. Just as she was getting to the end, she stopped and sobbed. It scared me. I’d never seen my aunt so emotional. I wanted to jump up and hug her. I didn’t. Because just as abruptly, she stopped and sat down. She was done.
After returning to L.A., I made it my mission to find my father. I always wanted to know. But I waited for my mother to tell me. My aunt and cousin knew nothing. My mother kept them in the dark too. So, I returned to the two women who first leaked a name to me when my mother had a stroke in March 1997. Her childhood friends, sisters Barbara and Linda.
According to the sisters, my father was the same age as my mother when they met. A young Air Force man from New York that everyone liked. They described him as being friendly.
“He’s the guy you may want to marry. But not the one you want to date when you’re looking to have fun as a young adult,” Linda said. “From now on, I’m going to talk with you as one adult to another. I think she chose him to be her first time because he was nice.”
I appreciated her forthrightness. It was the first time my father was something more than a figment of my imagination.
Linda continued. “I don’t think your mother told your father because she believed he’d insist they marry. He definitely would’ve made sure he was in your life. You could tell he was that kind of man.”
I had to learn how to be loved as I was as a gay man.
My mother was living with her strict widowed mother when she found out she was pregnant. Her family knew little of what she did when she wasn’t at work or taking classes at Phoenix College. They were shocked when she shared the news.
“My first thought,” my aunt said. “Was when did she find the time to do that? Being I was the older sister, your grandmother first blamed me. I was a married woman with a child of my own!”
I found my father in the late summer of 2004. Right away, I felt a connection to him. Still, I suggested a DNA test. A part of me wanted to believe my mother never lied to me. Plus, when I sent a photo of myself, he never hinted that I favoured him just as much as I looked like my mother.
I always say I was in search of my father, but I never expected to meet my dad. I was prepared to be rejected. Receiving acceptance from a stranger proved challenging. When he emailed a photo of himself as a younger man wearing shorts, I had to accept I’d never have the thick thighs I pressed weights to get. In the picture were my slender legs on someone else’s body.
My last name was my mother’s maiden name. Within the first year of knowing each other, my father asked me to change it to his. It scared me. I had to learn how to be loved as I was as a gay man. I resisted it until the summer of 2007. A month after starting the process, he and my stepmother informed me he was seriously ill. Eleven days before he passed on 11 November 2007, the change became legal. When I called to tell him, he answered with, “Hello, Mr Woodby. How are you?”
Ten years later, I was looking in the mirror, getting ready for work. For the first time, I liked how I looked. I saw both my parents in my face. More importantly, I stopped resisting the parts of me that are my mother. It will be a lifelong process, but I like that I see her each morning when I brush my teeth. Or when I visit Arizona and relatives say, “Boy, how is it possible for one person to look so much like his mother?” I smile bashfully. Like she did when she got a compliment about her appearance. My mother was a beautiful woman. And most of who I am is because of her.
