My Mom Is a Movie Star
On seeing my mom as a whole person, not just a parent
Every Mother’s Day, I write my mom a letter. When I was little, I’d deliver it to her in bed, alongside coffee and a plate of poorly made eggs. In high school, I’d give it to her reluctantly, and in college it was accompanied by flowers or chocolate. However presented, the letter itself was always similar: it voiced appreciation for my mom as a mom — as if that function were the sole defining feature of her life.
Turns out, it’s not.
Here’s my mom on a Thursday night in 1976, standing on the side of the Wayland High School football field, chin turned up at a rising swell of expectant faces and clouded breath. It is cold, the air bodied with mist too weak to register as snow but strong enough to cumulate on the shoulders of the letterman jackets dotting the crowd, a kind of crystalline ash that settles, too, on the back of my mom’s neck––but she doesn’t seem to notice. She’s standing alongside six other members of the high school twirling team. The girls are nervous — the bleachers are full, damn near the whole school is here — but my mom is the epitome of cool. Her eyes could cut ice. She bounces on her toes, all muscle and kinetic potential. In her hand she holds a baton that has been lit on fire at both ends. She holds it as casually as others might grip a tennis…
