One Writer's Dream for her Mother
Thank you, Mom
Last week, my mother became a paid subscriber.
“Mom,” I said, “you know most of my stuff on here is free. You don’t have to pay for it!”
“I know, but I want to support you.”
When I started posting on Substack in May, I stopped posting as often on Instagram. My mom, a private person who is generally averse to social media, maintains her “silent” IG presence, in part, so she can keep up with my adventures via my near-daily posts. I live, as has been the case on and off for decades, a long airplane flight or two away from her and visuals of my life on this island assure her that I am out here in this world balancing my innate introversion with people-time, wearing a sun hat and sunscreen, and walking my dog while not falling off any cliffs and breaking any legs.
If I forget, ignore, or just don’t do IG for more than five days, I think she worries. She texts a casual: “What’s happening over there?”
“This is what’s happening,” I write and send the photo below.
“You’re going to have a funny tan line,” she replies.
As I make these weird what-does-it-really-matter choices between what to post on Substack and/or IG and/or Facebook, and as I learn Substack and what it means to me and my real and imagined audience, I know it took my mom a couple weeks to figure out what she had to do to read even my free stuff—make a Substack account, then subscribe (or follow).
Mom was a regular subscriber before seeing or figuring out how to go paid. I didn’t ask her about her process, she’s smart as hell, but Internet and tech stuff and keeping up with it all is bothersome regardless. Tech and online stuff, as “necessary” as it (supposedly) is, is bothersome for me as well. I still so clearly recall in my high school “computer science” class in 1985, the first exchange “me and my computer” had with another student at another computer in another state. It took the whole 50-minute class period to exchange four blinking bright green old-school font sentences. It was a miracle, wasn’t it? But sometimes I want to shut it all down and live as I see some of my friends easily and happily living—totally offline! Imagine.
The point of my mother becoming a paid subscriber last week is not the power of miracles or money though.
My mother has always been my biggest supporter. Perhaps this is no surprise… this is what parents do, or are supposed to do. It is the job of a parent to invest in their children, nudge and encourage them, question and guide them, support their dreams, and let them fly. Not all parents do their job wholeheartedly or well, but my mom, for whatever elements of parenting and relating she might have struggled with, could give a TED talk on giving your daughter full free rein, believing in her when she’s behaving like an asshole and/or doesn’t believe in herself, and helping her achieve life goals that she (for whatever elements of adulting and relating she might have struggled with) could not achieve independently.
When I was 22, my mom saw me off to Hawai’i, where I’d finish my undergraduate degree and work as an archaeologist. She would visit me there—hop islands, go to museums, hike Volcanoes National Park, drink a beer, help push a Jeep out of the mud, remind me to wear my sun hat and sunscreen.
When I was 24, she saw me off to Austin, Texas, where I’d go to graduate school for teaching. She would visit me there—walk the campus, see live music shows, go to museums, drink margaritas with salted rims, remind me to wear my sun hat and sunscreen.
At age 26, Mom saw me off to South Korea for my first university teaching gig. She didn’t make it to Asia, but still has the small ceramic items I bought for her there.
When I was 30, she flew to France for my wedding. She bought my elegant champagne-colored gown in Paris. She smoked a cigarette at an outdoor café and puffed a cigar, as all the gals did, at my bachelorette party. We traveled through the east and south of France, visited forts and forests, museums and art galleries We drank the Burgandies, ate the Comté, bought the leather bags, inhaled the lavender, sat by the sea. We wore sun hats and sunscreen.
When I went back to school for my MFA in my early 40s, my mother did not question the financial burden I would take on for that degree (I might never be able to pay off my student loan). The money wasn’t the thing—the passion for books and writing was. I learned to read by age three because my mother read to me, and until the day she died, when I was sixteen years old, my mother’s mother had given me nothing but books, books, and more books for every birthday, every Christmas. I wanted Barbie accessories or lip gloss or earrings, but no, Grandmom Webb with her rooms full of Smithsonian and National Geographic magazines and books, books, and more books never changed her tune. From age four onward, I wrote stories about cats, horses, and clouds, and when my cousin Brad was old enough and drawing, he illustrated them.
At age 50, I bought my first house with my mother’s financial support. A part-time adjunct university teacher the bulk of my adult life, and then a freelance writer with my own LLC, banks would not give me a home loan. Mom helped make one of my “adulting” dreams come true… like, I had a house, a 1000-square foot buttercup yellow home! The bonus gift: She lived in the little orange house directly behind mine. We drank our morning coffee together. Our doggies romped in our shared yards. And when the COVID pandemic hit and the hospital called asking her to return to the nursing job she had just FINALLY retired from, I told her I’d tie her to a chair if she dared think of it. Mom and I bubbled up in our yellow-orange compound and had a god damned blast.
I wish my grandmother had lived to see me become what she had been, a teacher. I wish she had lived to see me go to school for writing and have some of my stories published. Does she see? Does she know I’ve helped dozens of people write their books?
Now, in a way, my mother is her mother. I would like my mom to see me reach that major goal of having my own book published. She has seen first-hand the trials and tribulations of a freelance ghostwriter’s life. Yes, she has seen the triumphs as well, and has read several of the books I have worked on, but she knows.
A mother knows.
My mother knows.
Here is a woman who never suggested I go into any other profession other than the ones I found joy in: archaeology, teaching, and writing. (Never mind she was never the mother asking when I’d marry again or start having babies.)
My mother KNOWS me, and what a gift that is.
I imagine it was not always easy for her to restrain herself—she worries, I know, because in a lot of ways, I’ve winged it, this life. She knows I live not vicariously, but precariously, and she won’t always be here.
When I was 55, I told her I was leaving Washington to go live in the Azores and she cheered me on even though it meant no more pancake breakfasts together, movie nights, and acting out our own version of Grey Gardens—laughing until our sides split.
When my mother wrote last week that she wanted to support me on Substack, I felt a mixed wave of emotions: gratitude for the $50, sadness we are no longer neighbors, guilt for being so far away now as she’s aging, and fear of her limited time left.
Mostly though, I felt my heart warm and swell.
My mom has always liked reading my words and believes I have a gift with them, and though she would never press it, I have now created for myself a sense of urgency to make my dream—which is also one of hers—come true. I want her to hold a book I have written, a book with my name and only my name on the cover, in her soft, overworked, and sometimes now shaky hands.
I want her to fly to this island and sit next to me on the beach. I’m the one who has prepared our lunch, carried the cooler. We raise our glasses of Portuguese vinho branco, and toast. Waves, the ever-familiar backdrop of our lives together—like words on printed pages—roll in with a music all their own, and then recede. The smell of sunscreen mingles with the scent of the North Atlantic and my mother has nothing to do but read my book.
While she does that, I close my eyes. I am drifting in the dream until she hits a passage she finds particularly funny. She starts to laugh one of those laughs of hers, the kind my sister and I have long teased her about, where she cannot stop laughing and the more we tease her, the more she loses all power to stop. Not even sure which hilarious scene of the many hilarious scenes I have written (my agent, my publisher, and multiple reviewers have hailed my ability to juxtapose such comedy with heartbreak!), Mom is now practically falling out of her beach chair—and I am too.
And then, overhead—or rather, from the great beyond where all the greats reside—my grandmother and my mom’s sisters and brother join in, rejoicing so hard the wind comes up. Mom’s sun hat flies off and mine does too, but we have too many tears in our eyes to chase them.
Beautiful beautiful beautiful piece about our mama! And so true!!!! ♥️