mommy

let's start with a platitude.  everyone has a mother.  every creature...  mother's are more common than right arms.  still, not all mothers are present.


this is an ode to my mother.  my mother who was absent.  (she was present for perhaps  1/11th of my life up to the point when she passed.)  my mother missed my early years completely.  incarceration is a bitch for the littlest ones. 


not all mothers enter into it purposely. 


the is an ode to my mother, who at 14 likely landed pregnant by happenstance.  she had no life path carved out and probably did not plan much.  2nd generation americans in los angeles of irish, english, and german ancestry, who became pregnant at 14 tended to let life happen to them and so their socio-economic lot was cast and struggling with masses of humanity was more than statistically probable.  their children were also born into an outlook fat with struggle but so beautiful.  so, so beautiful.


i don't know if everyone else in the world sees the beauty i see.  it is true that adversity builds character and great art often springs forth from it like a delicate, radiant flower climbs out of a crack in the pavement.  (the list of prime examples is unending.)  my perspective is born of struggle and sadness. 


i grew up with four mother figures by the time i was five.  they were wonderfully tender women who gave me love and security.  this ode however, is for my biological mother; tresenia james. 


i don't  know if my mother embraced smack in jail not long after i was born, perhaps sometime after her father had her incarcerated for being incorrigible.  I don't know if at 15 or 16 when she went to jail it was not the most natural thing for a child with an underdeveloped brain to seek the solace of narcotic.  i imagine her at that age partly from how i remember her on heroin at a later age, falling, just floating-falling into a place of comfort, a place where fathers nurture and love, instead of giving up and worse. 


by the time of my earliest memories she was hard.  she had a tattoo on the top of her arm that read, "shorty."  that is who she was to me at first.  every time i saw her, in places like the visiting area at terminal island women's penitentiary off the coast of long beach, everyone called her shorty.  i can remember her even later on the outside, with my aunt, her sister, who was four years her younger, how she was always comfortable everywhere.  outside the liquor store with people lurking in the shadows I recall my aunt expressing apprehension but my mom was in charge of the situation and ventured forth confidently with her jaw set.  my aunt, who by contrast was weightless and playful, was comforted by my mom.  so was i.  my mom was kind of serious.


i guess at some point she saw the limitations of her own life.  i am sure she felt guilty about what she provided for me and what she provided for herself.  i doubt she blamed her father or her family or the world or our species.  i think she may not have reflected at such a level.  self actualization requires some insight and erudition to achieve.


her day to day was probably consumed by the typical thoughts of a teenager.  at times she probably suffered from believing she had somehow caused her circumstances and was worthless for reasons related to how her father treated her, how impotent her mother was relative to my grandpa, and how poorly she understood her environs.  i am sure under the influence of the dope she went places as serene and fantastic as any real destination.  i am sure she felt as soft and pliable and one with the universe as any yogi or ascetic ever.  i know in that haze she forgot.  she forgot her father.  she forgot her child.  she forgot los angeles.  she forgot the love of her mother.  she forgot concepts and values.  she forgot herself and lost in that maze of altered states she walked through moments a totally different person, an entity unfettered by any sense of responsibility or being, perhaps not devoid of love however.


i don't love my mother on what would have been her 63rd birthday because she could not take care of me.  i don't love her because she lived in prisons far and wide.  i don't love her because she gave birth to me, from any sense of obligation or cosmic, genetic connection.  i don't love her because when i showed up at the prison in lexington, kentucky or glendale, arizona or pleasanton, california, i was a rock star.  every incarcerated chola who came across shorty in the joint must have heard of this cherubic child of white and filipino descent, (of a known of. but never encountered father,) because when i walked in those visiting rooms the fucking red, velvet carpet met my feet as prison-made presents showered me with the welcome of my people, my mothers, the girls who were exactly like my mother if of a browner color.  they came to me with smiles and kisses, praising me for being even more profoundly beautiful than the pictures they had seen.  their gifts were knitted or folded or drawn.  they always returned to their visitors as if grudgingly for having to leave the prince to his royal agenda.  i did not love my mother for giving me three colorful years of her life in the apartments of los angeles, bell gardens, hollywood, downtown los angeles.  i did not love her for asking me to steal items from a grocery store or bringing an abusive man into our home, (or rather me, into their home.)  i did not love her for cockroaches or hitchhiking or methadone or a half husky half timber wolf named lobo.  i did not love her for sunset boulevard or a '67 impala.  i did not love her for marijuana at way too young an age but i did and do love her.


i love my mother because she loved me in a way that is now too incomprehensible to know fully.  she loved me in the way she looked at me and the way she spoke to me.  she loved me completely and substantively.  when she comforted me i could sleep.  when she smiled at me i saw nothing else.  i was only capable of giving her love back but my love was that of a child.  i was not disagreeable but still, i had a certain sense of entitlement. she was my entitlement.  silently i demanded some things from her, not all of which she could provide but i saw her strive for those things. 


it may seem unlikely but my mother taught me love.  she gave me all she could, all she had, all she was. 


when she died on a bathroom floor in an apartment in azusa with the mojo pin still stuck in her right arm, i was on the other side of the planet.  a long flight and a day later i met her in a hospital room in glendora. she was on life support and she was not there.  there was no life or love in her.  of her own accord she was motionless.  the rise and fall of her chest belied the stillness of her soft, sunken face.  she could not smile at me in that moment and i had been trained to deal with this.


i did not know what to expect as i flew over the pacific ocean by night sensing the vast expanse below me and within me.  i knew she was on life support but i thought my voice might rouse her and everything would be okay and i would stay by her side forever and help her to overcome this evil comfort she sought so incessantly for 20 years. 


i walked from that room back into the world i knew and accepted the outcome.  when i was asked to go back into the room the next day after the decision had been made i levitated to her bedside and touched her hand.  those who were in the room watched me closely.  i forced two or three salty tears from my eyes and indicated i was ready to go.  back in the waiting room i participated in hugs and tender reminisces of six or eight people, of whom only half of us knew her at all.  then i went with my friends to a mexican restaurant and got drunk on margaritas. 


throughout my childhood i was more or less incapable of crying.  i didn't know why.  i only knew i seemed to accept the facts of the world, not bemoan them.  i was less than for it, too.  later in life when i learned to cry, or came to cry, i came to understand how good it really was.  the love i felt doubled in on itself then multiplied again and again.  i began to feel the weight of the world.  i sensed the nature of sorrow and came to adore it like a lover, to nurture it like an extension of myself and to feel it effortlessly and from instinct. 


if i am in any way special it is because of my perspective.  i love and crave justice like oxygen.  i am of the people because i come from disadvantage and it has always been my life's goal to be a champion for my people.  in many ways i have not lived up to that, perhaps because i am emotionally challenged.  perhaps because i am lazy and indecisive.  still in other ways i do what little i can.  in my work i try to help people assimilate into our crazy, hyper-capitalism.  our utilitarian jobs do not edify people.  they are not about stakeholders-but i try hard to help people understand the forces that play on their lives and find ways to cope and thrive. 


i have worked hard to educate myself in order to be responsible as an adult, responsible to my class, responsible in some way to those who are like me and so much worse off.  i had it good in many ways.  i had an aunt and uncle step in and raise from 11-years-old on.  i would not be a functioning father to my two wonderful children if not for that good fortune.  i am so thankful for all of my mother figures: aunt nancy, lupe, nana, elsie, carmelita, theresa elder, and more.  but my mother, tresenia james, set the bar.  she showed me and gave me love and in spite of her absence and her addiction, it was in those moments when we were together that i learned what everyone should have and know.  i love this metaphor about the wounded oyster.  (it is, after all, the wounded oyster which heals itself with pearl.)  her love as i remember it and feel it deep inside myself is my pearl.  i feel beautiful and i feel a beauty inside me that emanates from her love, so long ago.


you know a mother's love and how profound it is.  you have or had one-and you know.  it is more than circumstances.  it is more than your struggle. 


my mother's love informed my life.  it is the template for what i want in the world, for what i want for everyone.  it was pure and perfect. 


my love for her still, is the best of me.  i am become empathy.  i love.