When Jake and Landen and Corey and I moved into an apartment together and the boys got a room, I brought this book home from my parents’ house and put it in their bookshelf. It was one of my favorites when I was little. When Erin died, I removed it. It was going to be hard enough for us all to put one foot in front of the other without wobbling or toppling over. I did not want them to see the word “Mother” on the spine of a book or read about a bird that lost AND THEN FOUND his mother.
Corey Daniel Allbritton loves his children and me most in the whole wide world. One of his strengths is that he shows us every day who were are to him. But as Corey prepares to make his journey home to his family, I have been reflecting on where we three wanderers have been in the seven months since Erin died – who we were as individuals and as a family then, and who we are now, these people he is coming home to. They are two children waiting painfully for their parent, and I am seeking to find my appropriate place in this family. Am I their mother?
I get confused reconciling the difference between mom and mother. Best I can tell, a mother is who creates and births a child. For the most part, we hope our mother is also our mom – who tends to our needs and kisses our boo-boos. Remembers where we were every second of every day and catalogs the funny things we’ve said along the way. Takes pictures of every school play and baseball game. Knows the injury behind every scar and how she felt when we got it. Runs interference when we piss our dad off. Goes without sleep when we are sick and hurts when we hurt. If it so happens she cannot finish her job as our mom, she will make sure the people who will care for us know how to give the second-best kisses, take the second-best pictures and say the second-best right words.
I knew when Corey left for Iraq that Erin would go to heaven before he came home, and that the boys would be left in my care. Knowing for as long as I did, I got to watch them, to STUDY them, to find predictors for what their grief and ultimate resolution to the death of their mother would be.
Landen is a pretty typical boy, where extraordinary and exactly-what-you’d-expect combine to form the perfect balance of predictable and peculiar. He loves to eat, to sleep, to play, to laugh and to fully experience every bodily function available to him. He’s also very quick, smart, sly, to the point and incredibly funny. He’s an open book. He does not hide things well, least of all his feelings. He feels physical and emotional pain immediately and intensely and shows it. He likes alligators not girls, cars not church and builds helmets and weapons out of his Tinkertoys.
He was four when I met him and when his mother got sick. Whether it was his youth or his innocence of the negative, he was least affected by Erin’s deterioration. His understanding of her illness was what he could visually observe, and to him the seriousness of her illness was that she struggled to walk. And yet, we could all predict that this child, who wanted to be in whatever room his mother was in at almost all times, would be the first to recover from her death. He first broke about a month after she was gone, but recovered quickly and then had a bad month before school started. He’s doing great right now – recalling events and moments with his mother with laughter – but I think he will struggle again after the first of the year, when his birthday rolls around. His seventh birthday was the last one she celebrated. Turning eight without her is going to be difficult.
Jake is a yes-means-no boy, very tender, brilliant and utterly complex. He requires more effort than Landen, who is very affectionate. We have to seek Jake and give him attention, because he does not make his needs known as his brother does. Even though no one was talking to him about it, Jake could sense how sick his mother was and how dire her circumstances. I only now realize how much he understood. Jake is precise but not open, controlled yet temperamental and aloof but aware. He wants so much to be too tough to cry, and often his sadness is released as anger. Jake idolizes his dad and Erin’s dad, and his awe of them inspires his interest in history and combat and soldier-y things.
Jake has struggled since the first day he learned his mother was going to heaven. He would fight about going to visit her in her final days, not because he did not want to be near her, but because he did not want to be exposed to the alien in his mother’s dying body. That was not his mom, and no one could not make him see that frail patient as Erin Allbritton. She died right before his ninth birthday. We had a big party at one of those places with all the bouncy houses and every kid in his class came. He ran and he played and he opened all his presents, the model of good behavior, which is unexpected when he’s over-stimulated. We all remarked at how well Jake kept it together and seemed to enjoy his birthday. What fools we were. I look at those pictures now, and I see pain all over him. He was hurting so much, and it is only studying him through a lens that I can see the damage.
I knew that Jake was going to resist me and Landen would be the first of the two to accept me as more than a stepparent. I remember the come-to-Jesus we had in Izzo’s Illegal Burrito, following the fit in the drive thru at Wendy’s the night before whereupon Landen told me that he was mad at me for not being his mom. What I said then was that I wasn’t their mom or Erin Allbritton. We weren’t that similar and I would be doing the wrong thing to try to be her or to take her place. All I could be was me. I asked them to please not be mad at me for not being Mom, but to please tell me whenever they thought I was not being the very best Nell I could be, because they deserved the very best Nell. And they’ve lived up to that promise. Children keep us humble and honest, for sure.
I’ve heard Landen refer to me as his mom. My sister says he’s said Mom in reference to me before. He does not correct people who do not know us when they call me his mom, though I do. He’s even asked if he could call me Mom. Jake corrects “mom” with “stepmom” before it’s all the way out of the stranger’s mouth. He does not like me to exert my dominance over him by referring to myself as his parent. He is very clear that I am Nell, and he told Landen it was weird to think of calling me Mom. I told both of them that day, a couple weeks ago, that I would never force them to call me one or the other. They should call me what they are comfortable calling me. I am who I am regardless and I love them all the same.
Jake very clearly does not want me to be his mom. I am his stepmom. He remembers more of his mom than Landen does, and he wants his mom, not his stepmom. Not to say that we do not love each other very much. Jake is a child who tells us he loves us several times a day but it’s what I see more than what I hear that give me the confidence I need to parent him. A couple weeks ago I met Jake, Landen and their grandparents at church for Landen’s first confession. I saw them when they walked in the door, though it took Jake a minute to find me. He had seen me that morning, but when his eyes met mine he broke out in a broad smile and a fast walk to get to me and hug me.
Am I their mother? The answer is no. Their mother was Erin, stoic and strong with piercing eyes and a general flourish about her whole entire self. They have a mother, and she is sending them bursts of love from heaven. I am as little or as much their mom as they need me to be. That is not to be confused with being as much mom as they want me to be, for who wouldn’t rather their mother than their stepmom? In this period of grief and discovery, I straddle the line between Mom and Stepmom, and always remind them who is their mother.
Do you know who I am? she said to her baby. Yes, I know who you are, said the baby bird, you are not a kitten. You are not a hen. You are not a dog. You are not a cow. You are not a boat, or a plane, or a Snort. You are a bird, and you are my mother.
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