Day Nine

A picture of the person who has gotten me through the most:

My friends in rehab thought this was my sister.  It made Mom's day.

In many ways,  I feel sorry for my mother.  She and Dad didn't just get the usual child-rearing experiences; they made a baby with problems.  The chief reason I feel bad is that I never thought my parents could fix everything.  Every child needs that phase, of thinking his or her parents are super-heroes - every parent needs to be seen that way by their children.  They eventually got that from my sister; still, I missed out on the experience.  When a boy in excruciating pain begs Mommy to make it go away, and she can't, it leaves an indelible mark on the boy, Mommy, and the attachment between the two.

Still, over the course of my life, it's Mom I've gone to when there was something I just couldn't figure out on my own.  Mom was most often the one who, on those occasions of excruciating pain, sat in the bedroom or the hospital room with me while I writhed and screamed in vain.

We're beginning to understand each other better. I'm coming to fathom, as I contemplate eventual fatherhood (one of the life goals I anticipate most), what those experiences must have been like for her; she's starting to realize the extent to which Sickle Cell has determined the course of my psychosocial development.  Even as I acknowledge that only at this point in our relationship have we begun to accept one another, faults and all, I also know: whenever life threw something at me that I felt myself completely incapable of handling, it was my mother who taught me I was wrong.

I took this picture in the D.C. offices of Skadden, Arps on January 20, 2009 - the view through the window is of the Inaugural Procession as it nears the White House.  Although this trip occasioned one of the most difficult discussions Mom and I have ever had, it was also one of the best trips we've taken. I watched her tears fall, as a day she never thought she'd live to hear of unfolded before her eyes; I repaid her a little bit for all of the hard words and resentments between us - and for the fact that her son never thought Mommy could make everything better, but demanded that she keep trying.