Narrator: A mother held her new baby and very slowly rocked him back and forth, back and forth… And that boy grew. He grew and he grew and he grew…
Mom: Greg, come home. It’s getting dark and dinner is almost ready.
Greg: C’mon mom! Can’t we stay out just a couple more minutes? We just got the ball and we’re gonna score.
Mom: C’mon in. I don’t want you out after dark.
Greg: (Mockingly) I don’t want you out after dark. I can take care of myself!
Mom: There was a time when I loved my children so fiercely, I would have protected them with my life.
Greg: What I miss most is sitting all together, late at night, watching TV when there was no family tension or conflict.
Mom: I tried to build a home where they could live safely, with love…
Greg: But if I had to be honest… with three kids and a single mom…
Mom: …and where I could live sanely, with love.
Greg: …that wasn’t very often.
Mom: I’ll be there to tuck you in in just a minute.
Greg: I remember the big fuzzy pillow that was on my bed, and the hot wheel tracks that ran everywhere. I remember the familiar feel of the over-washed, faded bedspread and the distinctive smell that everything had when it came out of our dryer…
Mom: I love you
Greg: …the smell that you couldn’t get from any store.
Mom: I love you
Greg: … I loved our rituals… decorating Easter eggs… putting up the Christmas tree, hanging stockings and always telling the story of Santa threatening to go on strike because the naughty list was too long… I loved the way that every dent in the wall had a story to go with it and every crayon mark was a memory….
Mom: I love you
Greg: … and how we could tell the first two lines of how Doug and I pulled the fire alarm and all of us would burst into laughter without anybody else knowing what we were talking about…
Mom: We didn’t have very many nice things…
Greg: I wasn’t trying to break it.
Mom: Though it did seem important to keep the breakfast cereal off the living room floor.
Greg: I was going to clean it up during the commercial.
Mom: When I think of that home now, I think those were the most wonderful days of my life.
Greg: …It was the most wonderful, difficult, exciting and confusing time of my life…
Mom: As my children grew, I knew…
Greg: Mom, I’m going to try out for the team next week…
Mom: …the days that we would have together in that home…
Greg: Mom, I’m leaving now.
Mom: …in that way…
Greg: Mom…?
Mom: …were numbered.
Narrator: The baby grew. He grew and grew. He ran around the house. Pulled books from the shelf… and once he took his mother’s watch and flushed it down the toilet.
Greg: It’s hard to explain, but in some strange way, I figured out a lot about myself by watching – and later, remembering – what went on in that home – and all the feelings that came with it.
Mom: You always felt that our home was your castle and you were right.
Greg: There were times when that home was the most tender and loving place in the world.
Mom: When you wanted in, you banged impatiently on the door with a baseball bat…
Greg: And there were times when the turmoil and the anger inside those walls broke my heart.
Mom: …and when you wanted out, no promises or ultimatums could keep you in that house.
Greg: There was a time when I thought everything would always be just like it was every day I walked in after school. Nothing ever seemed to change. I became impatient for change.
Mom: You grew up so fast. While it was happening, the drama seemed to go on forever. But when I looked back one day, it was gone.
Greg: One day it seemed like nothing in my room, in that house, could make me feel at home.
Mom: You seem so far away when you look at me like that.
Greg: I need to go.
Mom: What’s going on with you?
Greg: (silence)
Mom: What can I do for you?
Greg: (silence)
Mom: When are you coming home?
Greg: (silence)
Mom: From the time my oldest son was still 13…
Greg: Mom?
Mom: …I began working on who I was….
Greg: Mom?
Mom: ….where my home was….
Greg: Mom?
Mom: …without my kids.
Greg: (looking startled)
Mom: If I wasn’t a mother. . .
Greg: Mom?
Mom: If I couldn’t be a caretaker anymore, or a nurturer, or a provider, or the one who stood next to the band-aid box, then who could I be? Where was my home? You might think that all this contemplation would prepare me for the emptiness that the house assumed when you left…
Greg: Mom?
Mom: …but it didn’t. No matter how long I’d spent getting ready for this, what happened was different. I spent many quiet mornings amazed that the stuff I’d left lying around the night before was still where I’d left it. I made many trips to the grocery store conscious of not buying massive quantities of milk and cereal. It took many days of watching the sun coming in my own window, past my own plants and shining on ‘me’ instead of ‘us’ to make the change from ‘our’ home to ‘my’ home.
Greg: Mom?
Mom: There was a lot of floundering. A lot of having toast and coffee in the morning by myself. A lot of crossword puzzles. A lot of watering the plants….
Greg: Mom?
Mom: A lot of stillness and strange thoughts.
Greg: Mom?
Mom: Like, do I have to keep all this stuff they leave behind just because it is theirs?
Greg: Mom?
Mom: Can I dare to put light colored carpeting in my house now?
Greg: Mom?
Mom: And then, one day the reality hits…
Greg: Mom?
Mom: WHAT?!?
Greg: Could I borrow a little money?
Mom: They come back.
Narrator That teenager grew. He grew and grew and grew. He grew until he was a grown-up man.
Greg: No, mom. I’m fine. I was just calling….
Mom: After you left, the house was so quiet…
Greg: Remember the time Doug knocked me out with the boxing gloves…?
Mom: I wondered if it was still a home…
Greg: …and everyone thought I was dead….?
Mom: You were immortal then…
Greg: No, really. I’m fine…I was just calling…
Mom: And you stayed that way for many years.
Greg: I… I miss you.
Mom: When I began to explore my own life, I found I could take you with me wherever I went…
Greg: I’d like to… but I can’t right now…
Mom: And so my home was within me.
Greg: I’ve got tests all next week and then I’m going away for spring break…
Mom: We are all apart now…
Greg: It’s complicated. I guess I thought that when I left that home, I would be free. Independent. But it’s not really what ended up happening.
Mom: …Yet I think we still carry each other around with us…
Greg: I ended up taking everything that ever happened in that house with me. Good and bad. I hadn’t realized how many hurts and hopes we each brought into that house. And how much we all depended on one another for the love and reassurance and acceptance. Whatever sense of ‘home’ that old house had came because we brought it.
Mom: …And I still think we carry with us that sense of home.
Greg: There are times when I want that sense of home back more than anything in the world.
Mom: Too many family reunions drive us all crazy…
Greg: And there are times when the thought of going back makes me cringe.
Mom: But never to be able to gather would be unbearable.
Greg: I’ve spent a lot of time gathering together memories. Some of them have sustained me through really hard times….
Mom: I tried to build a home that they could live in safely, with love…
Greg: …And some I am still sorting out….
Mom: and where I could live sanely, with love…
Greg: … We’ve all taken with us tokens of the past – memories that filled our hearts – or left holes in them – and we take the best parts and build homes of our own.
Mom: Greg, come home…
Greg: …Where life can make sense…
Mom: …It’s getting dark….
Greg: …and where we know we can always go…
Mom: …and dinner is almost ready.
Greg: Amen.
* * * * *
Narrator: That little boy grew. He grew and he grew and he grew. He grew until he was a grown-up man, who left home and got a house of his own.
Mom: At first it didn’t feel so far from our home in LA…
Greg: Newport Beach… San Diego….
Mom: And when they were within driving distance, I could still feel connected…
Greg: … on to Berkeley…
Mom: …but then when I realized I had to take a plane just to see them…
Greg: …and then Toronto… and Atlanta…
Mom: …I realized it’s not just the miles between us… it’s the number of experiences…
Greg: … I’m beginning to talk like a southerner – ‘Bless your heart!’
Mom: … and all the little changes that don’t always get shared.
Greg: I’ll tell you how it turns out next week…
Mom: … I taught my children to be independent. Just like I was taught. When I was three years old I felt that first wave of independence that came with my sister’s arrival when I fell from the ranks of ‘only child.’ Neither of my parents were that close to me to begin with – physically or even emotionally…
Greg: I always told myself that independence was about ‘freedom.’
Mom: …But I knew they were there. And that, without a doubt, they loved me.
Greg: In a clumsy, awkward way, my independence felt more like the search for the reassurance that I mattered.
Mom: We moved almost every year during the depression. I wasn’t in any school long enough to develop close friendships outside the home.
Greg: In the early years, independence felt more like a stalwart attempt to keep quiet about feeling lonely.
Mom: When my father died, it didn’t feel safe to let anyone else see me cry. I couldn’t show weakness. I feared that weakness would be exploited. Mostly I grew up learning how to take care of myself.
Greg: And I became quite good at it.
Mom: My mother wasn’t uncaring but I don’t think it was in her nature to show emotion. I didn’t look for it from her. So I didn’t expect it from myself.
Greg: In some strange ways I was rewarded for how well I could keep my cares to myself.
Mom: When it was time for me to move out, I hadn’t yet learned how dependent I was on my mother for reassurance. I only saw her once a week, even though we lived close by. She got cancer and died within 8 mos. It was only after she was gone that I realized how much I needed her. And how lost I would feel without her.
Greg: It took a long time to figure out – that my path to independence wasn’t really about freedom…
Mom: …I grew up learning how to take care of myself…
Greg: …In fact, it wasn’t free at all
Mom: …And that’s what I taught my children.
Narrator: …sometimes on dark nights, the mother got into her car and drove across town. She went to where her son was sleeping, and looked up over the side of his bed. If that great big man was really asleep she picked him up and rocked him back and forth, back and forth.
Mom: I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always…
Greg: …Awwww…. Thanks for calling… Please leave a message after the tone and I’ll get back to you…
Mom: It’s not easy being a mother. Nothing ever really prepares you to understand what complete unconditional love really is. Or how helpless you feel when you feel overwhelmed by it. It’s like getting strapped into a ride on a roller coaster… through the fun zone and the full catastrophe. And it lasts forever. Never mind 18 years. I never discovered any escape clause. Through adoration, aggravation, devotion and despair, that love and that need is forever.
Greg: It doesn’t matter how far you go, you are never out of range of maternal radar. My mom kept showing up in the strangest places: In all my baby pictures. The tape recorded loops in my head. She showed up in conversations with my wife – and with my therapist. Occasionally I even saw her in the mirror. But her main mode of connection was through my answering machine.
Mom: Gregory Scott! This is your mother speaking…
Greg: I realized that I could never outrun or outmaneuver her.
Mom: … are you there?
Greg: I used to think I could outsmart her…
Mom: …I figure I would have heard about it if you were dead.
Greg: But then I realized how truly diabolical her plan really was.
Mom: If you ever want to see all the stuff you left in my garage…
Greg: Mothers are at the heart of so many human needs.
Mom: Call me.
Greg: … and more often than not they are the key – to helping us unlock the stuff that brings order to our soul.
Mom: … Anyway, I just wanted to interrupt your busy life in Atlanta to ask you this question: Did you know there are twelve Unitarian churches in California looking for a minister right now…
Greg: …But it will cost you some of your independence…
Mom: …I can send you a list…
Narrator: Well, that mother got older. She got older and older. One day she called up her son and said, ‘You’d better come see me…’
Greg: For years I worried that I would wait too long to reconnect with my mother. And I would miss my chance to be with her.
Mom: Gregory, did you throw away all those pictures I had down in the basement. I can’t find them anywhere in the moving van. If you threw them away, I’m going to make you replace every single one of them!
Greg: Then, I worried that I might return too soon.
Mom: I never wanted to be a burden to any of my children. And I certainly didn’t want them to come in and try to take over my life.
Greg: Mom, there’s something I wanted to ask you.
Mom: I’m not ready to give up any of the freedom that I have left. Especially now that my strength and abilities are diminishing. What I have left is too precious.
Greg: I saw the scrape on your car…
Mom: (to Greg sternly) It wasn’t my fault! (to audience plainly) I knew there would be a time when I had to begin letting go of things. Eventually, I realized, I would have to let go of everything.
Greg: I know you really have loved being in charge and able to do everything by yourself…
Mom: I just want to be able to let go on my terms. When I’m ready.
Greg: I just worry that it will get messy.
Mom: The people I admire the most were able to hold onto the true essence of who they really were to the very end.
Greg: And I don’t want to take that from you.
Mom: Good!
Greg: I just want to make sure your true essence doesn’t run over somebody.
Mom: But I don’t to be run over in the process.
Greg: I know…. So, what do we do?
Mom: Come, just sit next to me.
Greg: It takes a lot – sometimes everything we can muster – to slow down our lives to the speed of tenderness…
Mom: I can’t get out of bed. I’m afraid of not being able to walk any more.
Greg: The conversations in the last six months…
Mom: … there are so many things that don’t feel finished…
Greg: … were more precious than anything…
Mom: … Gregory… I’m sorry…
Greg: …I ever discovered while chasing my independence…
Mom: … take care of each other… and… Gregory…
Greg: I’m here, Mama. (silence) Mama? (silence) Mama?!
Greg: She died two years ago. I thought after she passed, the connection between us would end. And eventually I would know what it was like to really be on my own. I thought all this reflection we did together would help me with the emptiness my life assumed after she left. What I discovered surprised me. There is some love… there are some promises… that are stronger than any distance. That are stronger even than death. She is still with me every time I come across those promises we made to one another. I feel her presence. I still hear her voice.
Mom: I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always…
Greg: … as long as I’m living, my mother you’ll be.
Mom: Amen.
