Mom Hasn’t Called, and It’s Pride
THIS JOURNAL BELONGS TO
COLE HABERSHAM
A personal reflection on stockpiling joy (and pride).
Maintaining joy in a life without your mother is a marvel, but we’ve long been marvelous.
4 MINS READ TIME
In 2018 I came out to my mother, Sandy, inside The Whitney museum in New York.
I wanted to be somewhere public when I told her—so she couldn’t yell, or cry—and somewhere beautiful, so I could remember the day as such, regardless of how she responded.
That response was: a laugh, followed by, that’s not funny.
Are you serious?
Then, finally: ok.
THE LOOK
Necklace, Don’t Let Disco
As a faithful and resolute Christian woman, my mother has always seen homosexuality as sinful. Days before I came out, she pressed me about my brother’s sexuality. He hadn’t had a girlfriend, fling, or female interest in several months and she wondered, do you think your brother is gay? No, I do not. But you’d tell me if he was? No, I would not.
In my mother’s ‘ok’ I heard all the reasons it was not. I heard the scriptures we studied, the gospel I myself preached door-to-door growing up: that sinners, including men who lie with men, will not inherit God’s kingdom. That day at the Whitney, enveloped in light from a brilliant Mary Corse installation, I became a sinner in her worried eyes, and she remained exactly the same: faithful and resolute.
In my mother’s religion, shunning is a common practice used to inspire repentance in a wrongdoer—no matter how much you love them, no matter if you birthed them. She told me two months following our Whitney saga that she would no longer be speaking with me. I could contact her if there was an emergency—someone was ill, I couldn’t reach my brother, or I wanted a Bible study.
We’ve spoken since, but not in the way a son speaks to his mother. I don’t tell her when I start a new job or cross the thirty day threshold with a romantic interest. I don’t get to call her up for recipe confirmation. I call her up to tell her when someone she knows dies. Or when my brother is in trouble. That is the extent of our limited relationship. If it were a rope, it’d barely wrap around my finger.
In the four years I’ve now lived without her, I’ve learned to exist with the void she left. That void feels bigger than my person most days. Mothers pour so much love into us that if they stop, they don’t leave a hole unfilled - they leave a chasm. I’ve tried my best to fill it. Music has helped. Fashion has helped. My exes. My friends. I have helped.
On days the chasm is felt, I think of the people who’ve entered my life following my coming out—Tinder dates turned besties, strangers turned sisters, lovers, found family—and how they’re here in spite of (and more likely, because) they know, appreciate, and accept the totality of who I am. The glitter on my very pretty nails isn’t something to tolerate, it’s something to love. Pride reminds me of this. Although my mother doesn’t call, this month I reflect on my growth. I slip on denim cutoffs, take some cloud paint to my cheeks and feel what I didn’t think was possible: okay without her.
This month is for stockpiling the euphoric feeling that comes to us every June—unbridled joy—and the most settling of thoughts: that we are phenoms. I’m blessed to have been surrounded by people with a clear sense of who they are, as I was discovering and defining who I am. I am a combination of their wonders, a blend of the kind, magical folk I’ve found in Brooklyn who’ve decided what to make of the life they’ve been given. I am Tianna and Demetries and Jamal and Cherise, Marc, Carter. And so many others. When I see them, I hold on for an extra seven seconds—it’ll go a long way when feeling low in August, or October. I record moments with them to look back on when She comes to mind. I will remember that I love and am loved by many.
That is why Pride matters - to ensure we feel it; not only in June, but throughout the year. We deserve to know how unfathomably bad and special we are. Look at the material.
So much in this life is subject to chance. Things happen for no reason at all, but often these things don’t matter. There is beauty and hope in the maternal way we care for ourselves and each other, while missing those who’ve left us. We build homes where there were none, and find people—once hidden—to call our own.
Maintaining joy in a life without your mother is a marvel, but we’ve long been marvelous.