Raised by a Matriarch

I just got off the phone with one of my old beloved babysitting charges. I was so pleased to connect with Kevin since I like to think that so many of the answers on his homework papers from 1st-5th grade came from me, and so much of my understanding of Nintendo and sportspeak and how to eat Tortilla chips properly comes from him. Kevin and his sister Maura were my kids, and I like to believe that they gave me a second childhood rife with bike-riding and band-aiding up bloody knees. It is hard to think about how much they taught me about myself and shaped the person that I was as a teenager. In their house, they saw me as a teenage in loco parentis, but I always saw them as my kids.

Kevin and Maura and I had a lot of fun and a lot of squabbles in the course of our summer days together or after-school afternoons together. But when their mother came home, our slate was always wiped clean. We had all been angels, we had all done our homework together. We had all eaten no more than our standard allotment of Oreos. With milk. Their mother was and is and exceptional woman, primarily raising her kids on her own, largely like my own mother had. And I believe it was for this reason that Kevin and Maura and I always got along so well. We had all been raised by matriarchs who became matriarchs in the absence of their husbands who still had some things to figure out about their lives.

My phone conversation with Kevin today covered the obvious bases - where do you live, how do you like it, and how many times a week do you think cherry Pop Tarts sound like a solid meal? The conversation shifted when Kev asked me for some counsel about his prospective career change. We talked about the importance of making leaps of faith, but also about the importance of savings accounts, the importance of friends and the importance of knowing, really ascertaining your passion. Then I asked him what his mother thought about his change, and that was, perhaps, the most important question I could have asked.

When you're raised by a matriarch who is a matriarch by default, aka a single mother, I think you live your life a little more gingerly. You've seen your mother struggle to make big cases for the small things in life. You've seen the look in her eyes when you gave her a hard time about the dinner she came home from work to cook for you, The Look that said, "Keep it up, kid, and you can eat a cherry Pop Tart for dinner, and don't think it will be a brand-name Pop Tart, either." You know what it means to your mother that you succeed because of the sacrifices she made for you, and maybe that sounds cliched, but maybe the experience of having a single mother is cliched, because it's all too common and still all too cumbersome.

Kevin said his mother had been pleased about his thoughts on a career change, since for him it would mean more time for family, for friends. I told him to keep me posted on his potential move and to know that he'd always have a couch to surf on in Boston. Finally, I told him to please tell his mother hey for me. I hope his mother knew what a great surrogate she'd been to me in the stead of my great mother, and by entrusting me with her children, she'd helped me to think about what I would be like as a mother, and no matter how hard I try to resolve otherwise, I'm sure that I will operate much like my own when that day comes.