joan garry

It’s Mother’s Day and I’m up early.  My kids are in their teens and so we didn’t have a 6am wakeup call with burnt toast and watered down instant coffee ready for us at 7am.   The rest of my family is asleep.  Just me and my dopey cat that believes the screened in porch is actually outside.

I’m thinking about the moms I know.  Of course I am thinking about my own mom.  But I’m also thinking about the women my brothers married.  I am the youngest and the only girl.   And so the women in my brothers’ lives have special meaning to me.   Besides, my brothers (like me) settled down young and with one exception have stayed settled down.

Steven and Peg

I met Peg when I was in 7th grade.   She and my brother dated in high school.  They’ve been married forever.  The term “sister-in-law” simply does not do the relationship justice.   She has partnered with my brother to create a wonderful family.  Three kids, now in their 20s. I have changed their diapers and am now offering career advice.   Peg and I talk often, we talk about the things that matter.  She is a good person and a very good mom.

Tom and Margaret

My oldest brother met his wife in college.  His college roommate’s sister.  Margaret and my brother have now been together forever too.  He and his wife are very Catholic and I admire and respect how both of them moved with care and intention down the path of accepting my sexual orientation.  They love my family and I love their family.  They have raised four terrific kids and are now the kind of grandparents I hope to be.  Joyful, slightly overindulging and available.  Margaret is a good person and a very good mom.

John and Susan

My third brother met his wife the first day of college.  Fall of 1971.  They were inseparable from that date forward.    My brother had (has) a complicated relationship with my mom and it was natural that this complexity accrued to my family’s relationship with Susan.   Their marriage ended badly after 26 years.  I was out of touch with Susan for too many years after the divorce and have in the last few years reconnected with her and with the daughter she raised on her own after the divorce. My niece is a second year med student and a very fine person.  As I have reconnected with Susan and with my niece, I have been reminded. Susan is a good person and a very good mom.

I’m also thinking this morning about my favorite mom.  And I say this with all due respect and love to my own mother (she’ll get a post all her own I think).  I’m talking about Eileen, the other mother of my children.

On our first date, Eileen told me that she really wanted to have kids and if that was not on my radar screen, then the relationship wouldn’t be going very far.   Now maybe that would have been understandable if Eileen was 38 and her biological clock was ticking.  But she was 27 and I was 23.  And besides, in 1981, there was not exactly a gay baby boom out there.  Hardly.

And I guess for many, that kind of comment would be more than a bit intimidating.  But for me?     I had just met this wonderful person who believed you could be gay and raise a family.   Count me in.

A credit to her high intelligence, Eileen waited until our second or third date to tell me that she really wanted to “have” children but “didn’t know what the hell to do with them once they got here.”   As I was interested in the latter (raising) and not the former (having), the match was made.

And it’s now 28 years later.  Eileen and I have muddled through.  Together.  We have three terrific kids.  We have made more than our share of mistakes but I believe we’ve done a few things right, too.

And when I wake up on Mother’s Day every year (spelled with an S’ at our house), I am always very very aware of my great good fortune.  That it is my holiday too.   Thanks to my partner Eileen.  She is a very good person and a very good mom.