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Jami Ward



Dear Mom

By Jami Ward

Dear Mom,

Well, another Mother's day has come and gone, so I figured I should update you on what has been going on ... although I'm sure you have some idea. The news I know that you're most interested in is what's up with your grandson. Well, S_ has been going gangbusters! He's talking a blue streak and getting into everything. He seems to especially love to climb on things and play in the mud. But I guess that's something all little boys do, isn't it? Even me? He really likes to read (well, he likes to look at books and to be read to), he already knows how to count and most of the alphabet, but he seems to be having a problem getting the hang of colors. He keeps trying, though. He's a very good kid, at least as good as any two-and-a-half year old can be. He's developed a real sense of independence, but not enough of one to be really rebellious. He wants to do everything himself, doesn't want anyone to help. I wonder where he learned that attitude?

C_ is doing well. Her hip and her back are still literally a pain for her, but they will be for the rest of her life, and she deals with it when she has to. She left her job at the Women's Center - a long story rife with political overtones best left for another time - but is looking again. I took over running everything here (house, yard, cooking, babysitting, etc.) for a week after she left to give her a vacation and some time to get over being mad and depressed, and she's now back out pounding the pavement looking for a better job. Things are tight, but we'll make out OK.

I'v been travelling for the job again. I've gone to some exotic locations in the past year, including Japan (Tokyo), Italy (Sardinia), and Texas (Port Arthur). It's getting harder to leave and to be gone now that S_ can say things like, "Don't go bye-bye. Stay home. Please." But I know that as tough as it is for everybody, it's a necessary evil associated with bringing home the paycheck. I wish I could have called you from someplace like Sardinia and described it to you. I think you really would have liked it.

That's about it for the big stuff. You know how things just kind of keep on keepin' on and that's about how it's been. I did want to take a some time here to thank you. I know that I've told you that in the past, but I feel like I should reiterate it. I wanted to thank you for giving me a lot of things that I really didn't appreciate until I had a child of my own. All the mundane material things like food, shelter and clothes, of course, but also all the immaterial things like love and support and acceptance. I especially wanted to thank you for some of your contributions to my genetic makeup like nice long legs, oily skin and a slim build. Although I'll admit that while the oily skin keeps me looking as young as you did, it also can be a real bitch getting makeup to last on top of it! How ever did YOU deal with it? And finally, I wanted to thank you for a sense of humor, without which I probably wouldn't have made it nearly as far as I have. By the way, I wanted to tell you that I think that you got all the humor genes in your family. I love your sister a whole lot, but Auntie is seriously funny-impaired. She found absolutely no humor in the joke that M_ made about our not needing to buy a headstone, because, since you had been cremated, there wasn't any head left. Macabre, sure, but all of us kids thought it was funny and we heard you laugh at it, too. In case you haven't seen it, the "marker" we did end up getting was very nice, thank you very much.

I wanted to avoid getting maudlin here, and I think I've done a pretty good job of that, but it's tough to dodge emotion altogether. I just wish that you hadn't had to go when you did. I wish that S_ had had a better chance to get to know his Grandmomma, but C_ tells me that there are times she knows without a doubt that you are watching over him, and us. For over a year after you died, the rainbow light that you had in your room at the hospice served as his night light, as "Gramomma's light". He's now decided that he's too big for a night light, but it's still available if he (or I) should need it. I wish I'd had a chance to get to know you better, too. I'd like to talk to you some more about my whole transgendered journey and about how very much your totally nonchalant acceptance of who I am has meant to me. That one fact probably has helped me as much as anything to simply accept myself. I know that you always encouraged all us kids to be our own persons, but now that I'm a parent, I can see how hard it really is to keep from falling into a trap that lets you push your children into what YOU want them to be. Thank you for letting me be your first child, and for not labelling me as anything more than that. I know it was hard for you to deal with me as an adult because it was hard for me, too. And now that you're gone, I've lost someone that I discover really meant more to me than I realized. I hope that in the end, though, I can be as good a parent as I now know you were. Thanks for being my Mom, and ALL that that means.

Love forever,
First of Four
(it's a Trek thing)

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