#sons – Sittin' Ugly Sistahs

You can't make this s*!# up.

Last night I rewatched Kelly Reickart’s movie Showing Up. Focusing on two artists preparing for their upcoming shows in a northwestern town, the narrative follows both friend and family drama. As Lizzy creates colorful ceramic girls, Jo works with textiles and string to design installments that towered around and above observers. Poetic scenes of other artists working at the local art school are interspersed with the two main characters who live next door to each other and clash over plumbing problems and the care of a pigeon with a broken wing. With the art world as its backdrop, the film has Lizzy and Jo support each other in different ways. From appreciating each other’s work to sharing the care of the pigeon, they show up.

On a sunny day in late May, I watched my son play volleyball in Zilker Park with the high school tennis team he coaches – an end-of-the-year celebration for his students. I sat at a picnic table loaded with cupcakes covered in red, white, and blue frosting, platters of cut-up fruit, bags of chips, gallons of water and Hawaiian punch, two boxes of mango popsicles and a five-foot tall plastic bag of popcorn from the movie theater where one of the teens worked. The sun came in and out behind gray clouds that contemplated rain. After energetic volleyball games where the players got covered in sand, sweat, and good cheer, the teens joined me at the picnic table to eat the melting popsicles and cupcakes.

Showing up is a true sign of love. I go to weddings, funerals, birthdays, and graduations not for the cake or prayers or confetti but to show support for those I love during life’s joyful and sorrowful times.

Evan made a speech about the team’s accomplishments before explaining he and his co-coach’s version of participation awards: individualized Pokemon cards for each student! They had designed these laminated cards with the Pokemon logo on one side and a photo of the student with his/her Pokemon stats on the other. Kids had names like “Warrior Doubles Player” and “Sassy Server.” A tall senior told Evan the card was the best school “award” he’d ever received.
I had not been looking forward to hanging outside that sweltering afternoon, but I loved watching my son’s tennis players celebrate with each other. Showing up might start out as a chore, yet the people I show up for always make me realize I made the right decision.

When my youngest sister died suddenly in 2004, the ordeal became a blur of nightmares that left me gulping for air as my family planned for the saddest day of our lives. Except for the Sam Cooke recording of “I Am a Pilgrim” that Gayle convinced a priest to allow us to play as we exited the church, the funeral mass and home visitation stuff felt robotic, cold. Later when mourners filled Grandma’s house and spilled out onto the front porch and backyard, I remember seeing people who surprised me with their presence. So many from New Orleans and other cities Kelly had left her mark on showed up in our small hometown. Gayle’s closest friend flew in from California, and when I said to him, “Danny, I can’t believe you came all this way,” he told me, “Gayle would do the same for me.” Most of that day’s memories are hazy, but I do remember seeing Steve, Kelly’s former boyfriend who was as sweet and calm as he was creative and handsome. He gave me a smile that for a second made me feel safe.

In 2009 after my middle son had a horrendous accident that required a six-week stay in the hospital, my Sittin’ Ugly Sistahs showed up in the ICU waiting room. Throughout Casey’s painful weeks filled with countless surgeries, I sat by his bedside. Friends dropped off food and gave me comfort. Gayle arranged for our immediate family to come to Austin to celebrate Christmas that December while Casey was still hospitalized.

Years later, family and friends braved the Texas heat to attend Casey’s outdoor wedding after COVID had cancelled their first choice for a November marriage. Gayle and Kelly’s best friend Mark flew in early to help with the rehearsal supper and the big day’s set-up of tables and decorations. Around midnight as we loaded our cars with wedding gifts and dirty tablecloths, Gayle told me, “I’m glad I came for Casey’s wedding, but this shit was hard!” Despite the scorching temperatures and stressful work, she and Mark had showed up.

Last June Gayle’s husband died from systemic heart disease. I got a one way ticket to New York as soon as I could. Our nephew Ryan and his wife Kelly flew into New Jersey for the funeral. Friends from out-of-state came up as well. Of course, Danny was there. I stayed two weeks and helped Gayle as best I could as a steady flow of friends and work associates showed up.

When death happens, we can be at a loss: “I don’t know what to say.” We don’t have to say anything. Just show up and give the grieving person a hug, a sad smile, a nod, a box of brownies. Taking the time to drive, fly, or walk there means more than we know. Showing up announces, “I care about you.” Even if we can’t ease their suffering, showing up helps the ones with the holes in their hearts, the fog in their brains, and the confusion in their souls. Sharing sadness is not as easy as bringing presents or making champagne toasts, but showing up matters to those we show up for. Only in-person can we give someone a hug that will last longer than a card or a text message. Messages and gifts might mean we’re thinking of those we care about, but showing up means we’d risk highway driving or airport stress to be in the room where life is happening. We show up.

When someone tells me, “You’re so nice,” I suppress the urge to scream in his/her face or step on my cat’s tail. I see “nice” as a smear of margarine on a slice of stale white bread posing as a breakfast sandwich. “Nice” is a word that hangs out with “weak” and “bland.”

Yesterday my youngest son told me, “Mom, you’re too nice.” I stared at at the floor and counted to ten while my cat sensed danger and ran under my bed. Evan was referring to how I don’t know how to say “no” when he or his brothers ask for help.

People confuse my awkward attempts to fix my loved ones’ problems as kindness. But I’m really thinking more about myself than them. Seeing my grown children wrestle with hardships fills my head with zombies craving human flesh and my stomach with rotting raw oysters. I want to get a lobotomy and puke my guts out! So when a son’s troubles make me sick, I try solving their problems so that my own head calms down and my stomach stops churning. Like the momma pelican on the Louisiana state flag who feeds her babies with her own flesh, I give parts of myself to those who were once part of me. It’s not “niceness”; it’s self-preservation.

Back in the 1980s and 90s my number one job was to feed, love, and protect my kids. For twenty years I enjoyed the unconditional love and respect of at least one of my sons at a time. Baking poppyseed bundt birthday cakes or taking them to see the latest Pokemon movie made me a momma bear they could count on, and in return my head and tummy relaxed. Back then all I needed was a quick hug from a sweaty five-year-old to make me believe I deserved all the gold foil stars life could give me.

Crystal, my mom-guide/ consultant/ therapist, told me, “Living and caring so much about our kids is the yen and yang of our lives.” Preach! My own momma taught me to feed my kids rich, spicy foods, to make them laugh, to sing them songs as soon as I first made eye contact with their infant eyes, and to crave their company as much as their approval.

These days I pray to Mother Mary, “Please evict these hornets from my brain and settle the marching soldiers in my stomach – or at least make them trade their combat boots for Dearfoam slippers.” Is “Let go and let God” even possible? When a grown son sobs or has no appetite for his favorite food, I’m pulled into an underworld ruled by a satanic kind of Worry. I obsess and ask, “How can I help him smile again?”

I’ll drive the streets to help Evan put up fliers about his lost dog. I’ll make Casey a turkey sandwich and drop it off at his work when he’s too busy to take a lunch break. I’ll drive Shane to an urgent care clinic when he’s on crutches and worried about a swollen foot, and I’ll try not to take offense when he criticizes my clinic choice.

Last week Evan told me,”You worry too much, Mom.” He didn’t know that as soon as each son took his first breath of life I became his caregiver, protector, cook, teacher, nurse, dictator, confidante, and judge. And then Worry (a huge belching, farting, frowning dictator) plopped down in my head – forcing Common Sense (a tidy secretary) and Optimism (a grandma who crochets as beautifully as she cooks) into the back room of my brain. Worry claimed a throne right next to Love (a wise, patient librarian) where they both have ruled my life from that day forward.

When I told Evan I was writing about my tendency to be “too nice,” he gave me a side hug and said, “You’re not really too nice, Momma.”

I nodded at him and winked at my cat. “Right!”

Then my boy with the dark beard that hides his half-smiles and the keen brown eyes that reveal his artist’s soul turned up one corner of his mouth and said, “Everybody else is just not nice enough.”