From 1989: A bittersweet Mother’s Day: cherishing moments with my adoptive mom | Opinion
(First published May 15, 1989.)
How was your Mother’s Day?
I picked Mom up Sunday morning to take her to a nice church.
“There’s my darling,” she said, toddling down the hall at the hospital.
It was a big change from the other day, when she came at me with her face flush red.
“I’m going to kill you!” she screeched. “So help me God!”
My mom might be a little different from your mom.
She’s 76, and has always had fits of rage or crying. They might last minutes, hours or weeks.
In between, she’s great.
I pray for lots of in-between.
I love my mother dearly. My father died four years ago, and since then, it’s been just us. No brothers or sisters, no other Kennedy family.
There’s a special reason I love her dearly, through the occasional screams and tears.
She wanted me.
I’m adopted. The Kennedys bought me in 1955, for a bargain-basement price of $600.
That was more than Dad earned in a month at the box factory on West Seventh Street across from Montgomery Ward.
(They were both past 40, so adoption agencies wouldn’t let them apply.)
They found me — where else? — in the newspaper, from a tiny Star-Telegram classified ad.
(Mothers peddled children alongside used cars then.)
Mom had her own baby boy long ago in Virginia, but he got sick as an infant and died. The death certificate says it was cholera.
She waited 22 years, and bought another chance to be a mother.
So when she picked me up at what was then All Saints Hospital, she held me tight to her heart.
It was great to be loved so much — wonderful for a little boy.
Mom’s only job was sewing at home, in our little frame house near the railroad yard.
So I remember days upon days playing games, learning to read, helping her clean house, riding the bus to go downtown.
If I was “smothered,” it worked. I’m better off than some west side friends who grew up with more money but less love.
But something awful happened to Mom. She summed it up the other day, through a flood of tears.
“Why?” she cried.
“Why did you have to grow up?”
Mom’s been crying, and mad, a lot lately.
She’s lonely in her retirement apartment. She’s weak, and her bones creak worse than they used to.
By now, you’ve guessed.
This Mother’s Day hurt, because after church and lunch, I didn’t take Mom home. I took her back to a hospital.
On the way home, I saw a cemetery, and bright yellow flowers covering some mother’s grave.
I cried.
And I thanked heaven, for a few more precious hours of in-between.
This story was originally published May 8, 2020 at 10:43 AM.
