Mom

My parents came home from Paris over the weekend, and before I returned to my apartment on Sunday night, my mom invited me to stay for dinner. I’m never one to pass up free, home-cooked food, so I stayed.

I sat in the kitchen while she was making dinner, and we had a terrific conversation. Sometimes a much-needed conversation can do you more good than a month of therapy sessions. I was upset; lately I’ve been obsessing over the mistakes my parents made in raising me, feeling like a victim, going over and over in my mind how I felt so hyper-criticized as a kid. But my mom and I had a really good heart-to-heart, and I realized how truly and deeply she loves me. We worked through lots of stuff, and I feel less like a victim of my parents’ actions now, and more like a person who is the way he is partly because of nurture but also partly because of nature. And I feel more empowered to work on changing some things about myself.

She recommended that at some point I have the same sort of conversation with my dad. Which might be harder, because he never seems comfortable having those really earnest heart-to-hearts, and in turn that makes me feel uncomfortable having them with him.

I had an interesting moment with my mom, though. At one point she said, “Look — if it makes you feel better, I don’t care that you’re gay. I’m fine with it. It doesn’t bother me anymore.” She said that she’d come to realize this was just who I was, and that yeah, it’s not what she would have chosen for me, but that it’s what makes me happy.

I couldn’t believe it. But that wasn’t the end.

My mom is a student this year. She told me that one of her fellow students is a gay man, and she said to me, “I can tell that he’s really comfortable with himself. And you know what? You’re not. You’re not comfortable with yourself.”

And she was completely, utterly correct.

I never thought I’d reach the day when my mom was more comfortable with my homosexuality than I was. But it’s here.

My world is now topsy-turvy.