'Get It From My Mama': How My Mother Proved You Could Be Flawed and Still Live the Dream
She didn't know what she was doing, and that was OK.
“I don’t cook. I don’t clean, but let me tell you how I got this ring” — Cardi B
My mother was always into the “mystery” of Deloris. As in, my mom, Deloris, had her mythology about herself, but then there was the reality, which was largely a secret until she died in 2018 and my father started getting nostalgic, spilling all the tea on who she was to him. His reality of her was in stark contrast to the hard-core perfectionist who could never apologize for anything that raised us.
I always saw our mother as a supremely confident, charming, beautiful woman, who was smart and funny (both on purpose and unintentionally), who was affectionate, devoted to her family, and a lot of fun to be around. But she was also a bossy, constantly complaining, controlling, money-obsessed, argumentative mess who could push your buttons to the point of meltdown. Mostly because she could not admit fault and let her kids almost always believe we were responsible for why she was always contradicting herself or acting ridiculous.
But when she died, I learned my mother, who never cried in front of us, cried ALL THE TIME in front of our dad, was at times deeply insecure, and was emotionally all over the place while not being able to cook to save her life. Every “good” recipe she made was my dad’s family recipe that he taught her.
I used to ask Mama, “How did you and Daddy meet?” and she would be purposefully vague, as she never liked to tell a story that didn’t make her look or sound perfect. After she died, our dad told us they met at his apartment one day when a co-worker of hers, who knew his brother, brought her by his home unannounced to fix them up. Because my dad did not get this memo, he assumed something was up (my dad is the most suspicious man alive), and tried to play off my mom, who called him afterward a few times before it sunk in that she was 1) single and 2) interested. She initially pursued him, which I guess she thought was “wrong” and “looked bad,” because the attitude she’d given us our whole lives was that our dad chased her in his “runover tennis shoes” he was using as house shoes at the time.
Our dad said once he realized she was single and interested, he did do all the chasing, but for whatever reason, my mom could not tell this story that humanized her. She couldn’t tell any story that humanized her.
This was to all our detriment.
I grew up thinking I had to be perfect. That I had to be perfect to be loved. Perfect to get a husband. Perfect in school and my career. Perfect to be successful in this society. There was no room for error, as errors were not allowed.
I was a good student and well-behaved by her standards, so I thought perfection was obtainable. That it was always just around the corner. And I chased perfection for YEARS, thinking something must be terribly wrong for me to not be what I thought my mother — and by extension, our father — was.
It’s not like either of them were offering up “I sure screwed that up” stories.
Because my parents had a healthy marriage, were successful, and were strict/disciplined financially but without context, I learned all the wrong lessons. I thought love just “happened.” That if you were perfect, someone nice would “pick” you and all would be well. Well, I got picked by someone I was woefully incompatible with in college and rolled with it because “no other boys liked me” so I thought I should just be grateful for whatever “I could get.”
As I got older, even after that relationship blew up in my face, it was easier to not bother with relationships or pursue dead-ends, rather than take the risk of opening my heart to a nightmare who would abuse it. Yet, as watching copious amounts of reality TV would teach me, some of the worst women to ever walk the earth, who were extremely flawed to borderline insane, could find a man who loved them, screaming fights and all. And sometimes those men were “good.” So what was I, a fake perfect girl, doing wrong?
Well, no. 1: I was a “fake” perfect girl. The only people attracted to my rigid nature were those who were controlling and desired a facsimile of a woman, not a fully formed, well-rounded human being with emotions.
No. 2: I thought I had no agency or power in this and that love just “happened.”
After my mom died in 2018, my dad started providing context to who my mom actually was, and it slowly seeped the real reason why I’d been single for nearly two decades since my college relationship fell apart. I wasn’t doing the work. I wasn’t really trying. And I wasn’t being my authentic self.
The true story of my parents’ courtship revealed that my mom had the formula all along, but simply didn’t bother to educate us in it. There was nothing wrong with what she did to find love, and if I just dropped the ego, the Perfect Patty facade, and did the work, I too, could end my streak of loneliness.
So I had to unlearn the lessons my mother taught me about love and act on what she actually did.
She raised me to not date. She “encouraged” us to focus on school and doing what we enjoyed, and that love will simply “happen.” She made pursuing love sound foolish and immature and that women who chase after love are “desperate” and nobody likes desperate. She encouraged me to play aloof at all times and let the guy just “figure it out” if you like them or not. And men, not being mind-readers, never figured it out.
Contrast this with what actually happened to my mother. She was called an “old maid” by members of her family when was 21 and still single. She met my dad when she was around 26, years after she’d finished college and was working as a school teacher. According to reality, she was quite “desperate” to meet someone “nice,” so she flooded her network (other teachers) to see if anyone knew anyone they could fix her up with. That “anyone” was the music teacher at her school, a married guy who was friends with my dad’s younger brother. It was this man who introduced my parents by bringing my mom to my dad’s apartment one weekend. More than six months later they were engaged to be married, and the rest is history. They never really lost their passion for each other and were giggling in the kitchen, chasing each other around well into their 70s. They were married until the day she died in 2018 from complications related to dementia. My father was her primary caretaker, and he still loves and misses her to this day.
Why my mother was so down on love when it worked out great for her is one of those great mysteries I’ll never know the answer to. I can only conclude that she was afraid of us getting pregnant when we were teens (a real fear and problem in the 1990s) and went overboard bashing men and boys to discourage us from getting knocked up. She could have — I dunno — talked to us honestly about having sex, about protection and discernment, but I guess that was too hard. It was easier to freak out anytime a boy was mentioned and drag heterosexuality through the mud to Jedi mind trick us into believing we were “weak” if we liked a boy.
More than 30 years later, there’s only one grandchild between three girls, and no one is married. Mission accomplished?
When I was in my 20s, I told my mother how absurd she was about us dating. But because she could never admit she screwed up, the best she could offer as an apology was an angry statement, “NOBODY GAVE ME A BOOK ON HOW TO RAISE KIDS!”
My mother was a beautiful, charming woman, who could not cook and probably had OCD (she vacuumed the house every day and dusted every other day, cleaning the clean) on top of anxiety and a host of other issues her Boomer-adjacent self would never cop to. Like her fears and traumas around money or the mental block she had around certain types of people or activities. She couldn’t pump gas or use an ATM. She never learned how to use a computer, and was wholly dependent on my dad for everything as the “passenger princess” in his life. She was not perfect, yet she found love because, despite her messaging on perfection, you don’t need to be perfect to find love and happiness. You can be a literal hot mess who overcooks every piece of meat and vegetable that comes across your path; who makes spaghetti a “soup,” and who gives terrible advice on dating and relationships, then cries at the drop of a hat while panicking over nonsense, and someone will look past all that, see you for you, then value and love you. My mom was more than just the “chief cook and bottle washer” as she called herself — she was a fully-realized person, worthy of love.
So don’t waste time. You don’t have to be your ideal self to find happiness. Take that trip. Go on that date. Wear the bikini. Discard reservations about not having the ideal “beach body.” Focus on what makes you happy and pursue it. Stop waiting for the perfect moment or perfect time or perfect body to live your life. We only get this one life and it’s too short to waste it waiting for a perfect day that may never come. If you want love, career, friends, wealth, or family, pursue those things without fear. It’s better to put yourself out there and try than stay inert and never achieve anything.
You can do it. Because while perfection is an illusion, love remains real.