Some Things Can’t Be Summarized
“How long did you live with Sue, anyway?” Even my mother didn’t know how much my godmother raised me.
“Well, there was that stint in DC and then that bit in Pennsylvania and Buffalo after that.” I said to the woman who gave birth to me.
There was also my whole life.
Sue was my other mother. She was there from day one. Sue and my mom and met as healthcare coworkers in Maryland over 40 years ago. They parted ways and a time later, my mom found herself with child, in Idaho of all places with nowhere to turn and nowhere to go. At that time, Sue had returned to her homeland with four kids in tow. They had still been in touch so Sue told my mom to come here. Western New York. My mom took the bus across country to live beside her in the Tonawanda Projects.
That was the start of it. Well, that and the night they showed my naked baby body to the moon. The night I was released from the hospital, Sue’s kids danced in the backyard of the projects and presented me to the universe.
Sue’s family wasn’t my family but they were. My mom worked and was Sometimes, not often, I watched myself, sometimes I stayed with neighbors, sometimes (not often, I watched myself, but I was at the Sue’s the most. Sue taught me how to dance and sing in the kitchen; that bass days were temporary and that you could hear the ocean by holding a conch to your ear.
Her kids taught me to play basketball and roller skate. They taught me about swirlies and whoopie cushions, how to master Duck Hunt and all the dirty words. We trick-or-treated together, had horror movie marathons, they helped me with my homework and they dressed me in their hand-me-downs. We shared summer sprinklers and sparklers, we Bills Sunday’d in the winter.
What else was a family?
The first time I lived with Sue was after undergrad. I’d moved to Maryland to help out with raising my sister after my stepdad died. The second time Sue took me in, it was when I was waiting to go to grad school. We were in Reading, PA for as many months as it took me to convince her to move back to Buffalo. I spent my whole first year of grad school writing from Buffalo’s West Side in Sue’s sun room.
Beyond all that, before and after, I wouldn’t know how to summarize all the shared space.
I was in a pretty bad car accident with legal troubles in my 20s. (Car almost rolled over my head and destroyed some property.) A few years ago, when I was at my absolute worst, it was Sue who came to see me when I was hospitalized.
I was not Sue’s child. But how not?
I’d lost more than a handful of people by the time Sue passed. Friends to drug addictions, caretakers to diseases, old classmates to war. Sue was the first person I’d lost that knew my whole 39 years of life.
How long did I live with her?
Not long enough, says the greed in me.
The last time I saw her in the hospital bed, I told her so. Her hands had already become small, given to the second relaxation and she was gone. I bent down and whispered into her ear, “You can come back now. Come back now and I’ll pick you up. I’ll pick you up. I’ll show you to the moon.”