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And so I reveal—to my immediately delighted mother—that I’m dating someone. And, out of nowhere, I’m on the verge of tears.
Mom reaches out for my hand and says, “Tell me what's on your mind. What's bothering you about dating this man?”
“Oh, mom, I’m second-guessing myself. After that bastard in college … I’m not trusting myself to know this guy is a good man. An honest man. Or not.”
I don’t need to remind mom of that bad breakup in college. I’d been a wet rag for weeks about it, and mom knew the whole story.
Mom passes me a tissue and says, “Oh, honey! You can't judge all men by one bad one. I mean, look at me. Where is your father? He's not anywhere around. I didn’t do it right back then with him. I didn’t see him for who he was. I was just too young to be smart about such things. But we—you and I—have wonderful friends around us. They are all wonderful men and women. You know that. I’ve learned a lot about myself since then, and a lot about people. In spite of what my big brother believes …” And she gave me a comical look that said it all.
My uncle was convinced we were just two damsels in distress. That without him and mymalecousins we’d be lost to the ways of the world. My mother and I haven’t had a heart-to-heart talk in a long time, and her mentioning my uncle’s suspicion of our ability to make our way in life without him made us both laugh for a minute.
Mom sobers and says, “As you know, when I was still pregnant with you, your uncle told me, ‘Sis, you can learn the mechanical things about raising a kid. You can learn how to change a diaper the right way. You can learn how to feed your baby. But a lot of it is just trusting yourself. Believing that you're doing things right.’”
Mom gazes at me. “So what does your gut tell you, BB? Does your intuition tell you that you're doing the right thing by dating this man? By spending time with him?”
I couldn’t answer yet.
She went on, “What I learned is you have to just trust yourself because everyone else will have their own opinion. And they'll be right or wrong, but in the end, you're the only one who can do it for yourself. You're the only one living your life. I made a wrong choice in high school. Not about having my baby. But about the man who made it with me.”
I rarely heard mom refer to him.
“But that's water under the bridge. The choices I've made since then were allrightfor me. Look how you turned out! You are smart. You have a good education. Heavens to Murgatroyd: You speak geek! And I never learned a foreign language!”
It was her standard joke to me once she understood what a “geek” even was.
She had made her point. “So tell me about this young man. What do you have in common? And what are your differences, since you seem to think there are some major ones?”
I look at my mom, comforted by her own revelations. I explain that, in fact, he speaks geek like I do. Without revealing that I’d picked him up at a bar well before my story began, I tell her, “We met at the technology convention I went to a while back.” We both get a laugh at mom's old joke which mom brings out right now. “Oh, I never learned to even say hello and goodbye in the Geek language.”
We chuckle together. I think some more, “So, similarities? Well you know, he's an amazing acoustic guitarist and you know I love music. I haven’t convinced him to go to karaoke with me yet, but I’m working on that. He's a vegetarian, mom!” and I smiled my biggest smile. “He eats mountains of food so we get along just fine in that regard. We've been to lots of restaurants where we've had great, great times talking. He's got a good sense of humor. And like me, he just has one parent. He’s really attentive to my well-being.”
And he is. Sending drivers for me. Making sure I’m home safe. And way back, at our first date, asking me about restaurants so that I’d be happy.
And in bed? Wow, he’s always made it about my comfort and pleasure first.
Yes, he has.
I glance at mom, and she’s just nodding. She says thoughtfully, “I didn’t even think about what your father and I might have in common. One minute we’re on our first date, and the next there you were. I never even wondered back then what he and I might have in common. I only saw that he was gone.”
I tell mom, “Well, he just has his dad like I said. His dad was taken by ambulance to the hospital not long ago.” I explain about the hospitalization and how I thought about what would happen to me if she had any emergency like that.
“You know you can always, always call your uncle, BB.”
I nod.
Who could I count on?Really?
Sure, I have my uncle and cousins but I get a little tear in my eyes with mom when we talk about it.
Chapter 37
Hendrik
Themenstaybackfor a while to discuss additional security for my building and my studio, and one says, “With all our tech-savvy, there has to be a way to first, protect our Professor and the building better, and second, to find out why that gang thought they could bust in here anyway. What went wrong that they even got in the main door downstairs? And then? Why here?”
I sit back and listen as these amazing men figure out how to keep me safer.
Why am I holding back with Beatrice? I all but admitted to her that I’d made a conscious decision that she would never come to my place.
