My Origin Story: My Mother

Happy Saturday,

Last week I wrote a bit about my mom. This week I'm sharing more reflections about how she raised me. As parents, we often parent from the emotional place that our parents parented us. For better or worse, the decisions we are making for our little ones are often informed by what our parents did or didn’t do for us when we were younger.

My mother was born to an African American father stationed in Germany and a White German mother. Her conception was not intended and when she arrived she would not stay in their care for long. She was adopted by an African American family who was also stationed abroad and who would return her back to the States at the age of five to be naturalized in Detroit, Michigan.
My mother’s parents didn’t stay together for long. As a child, she often wondered who her biological parents were, as so many adopted children do. She also dreamed of being on stage. Her mother used to tell her that she needed a real job because anyone could act.

Somewhere during or at the end of college at Wayne State University, my mother landed a job at a radio station in Detroit. This was the beginning of her career on stage. It wasn’t the stage that she originally dreamed of, but it was something.

She made her way to New York City to take a television anchor role that made her one of very few women anchors and one of the first Black women on air at the time. While in New York she anchored for Channel 5 before it was FOX (Ha!) and Channel 7-Eye Witness News. She eventually found her biological parents and wrote a book about her life.

My mother and me before my parents divorced.

After my parents divorced and my mom and I moved from New York to Washington, DC where she had been anchoring at Channel 7 during the weekdays – yes, she used to commute to DC every Sunday night and come back to New York on Friday night up until this moment – she and a few other anchors were laid off from their jobs for less expensive talent.

I was four or five at the time and had no clue what she was experiencing as a newly-divorced, newly-unemployed mother charged with raising her daughter in a city she had no intention of staying in for long.

Work, something that originally gave her the opportunity to realize a version of her professional dreams, was now a means to an end.

She needed to find work to be able to pay for our condo, my school tuition, and the $100,000 of debt that she got saddled with after my father abandoned his medical practice to run to be the president of Haiti, not once, but twice.

She needed to figure out how to make ends meet using the talents that came naturally to her.

From this point until I left for college at 17, I watched my mother be her own boss not because she always dreamed of it, but because she had no other choice.

Nico and Zadie live their best lives in some boxes at the Lenox store.

The life that she created for us allowed her to take me to and pick me up from school everyday, and of course, spend time together on the weekends. At the time, these 15-20 minute rides didn’t feel like enough. I wanted her to be at the school helping with all the school volunteering projects that I saw all the other stay home moms leading.

In retrospect, it was during these rides that we bonded the most. The car was our place of connection. It was the place where we talked about everything and nothing. I’d stare out of the window and we’d drive in silence or I’d fill her in on who had a crush on who in my grade. She’d bring me afternoon snacks at pick up. My favorite was a fresh, flaky Palmier. And, in the mornings we’d stop by Whats-A-Bagel and I’d get a cinnamon raisin bagel with plain cream cheese a Mango-Orange Nantucket Nectar juice. In hindsight, there was a lot of sugar in these memories, but I digress.

My mother loved to drive and I was her child companion.

After I became a mother, I longed for shorter commutes and more connection time during life’s mundane tasks. I wanted not to be psychically preoccupied with work drama and stress and have the opportunity to be mentally and emotionally present for my little ones. I wanted my time with our kids not to be an escape from all the heavy work stuff, but the norm. And, I wanted to be in charge of how I spent my days.

I know now that my mother was thinking about so much more than I realized during these car rides. But, to me, she was with me in mind, body, and spirit. Her physical and emotional presence during these moments when she was picking me up or dropping me off held me. And, I hold these memories as I actively create the life that I want for our kids.