Sunday
May112008
On Mother's Day
Sunday, May 11, 2008 at 06:39AM
I’d like to take a moment right here and talk about how freaking amazing my mother is. If you know her, you will understand why I say that while of course everybody’s mom is special, I am somebody who has seriously lucked out in the mother department.
So, a year ago, partially inspired by the Artist’s Way, I quit my lucrative day-job to run my theatre company and make some plays with uninterrupted focus. I decided to live on my savings account for as long as I could in order to complete the two-part project of Medea Knows Best, apply for our 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status (which we are shortly being awarded! Whee!) and start building the infrastructure for a company that more and more I am beginning to regard as my life’s work.
Did my mom freak out at my abandoning a stable income for an artistic dream that makes me approximately $0 annually, at 27 years old? No. She got excited for me, told all her friends how proud of me she was, donated money to Nebunele, and traveled to San Francisco with my dad (who helped build the set) to see the finished product.
This month, I decided to leave my cute little studio apartment on Capitol Hill to move into a beautiful big house, farther out of the city center, with partner-in-crime Claytie. We needed a third roommate to make the house affordable, and for a time were considering a good friend of ours who also happens to be an ex-boyfriend of mine. When I told my mom about that, she let me know that she thought it was a bad idea, as that would have the potential to create emotional storms that could wreck my relationship with him and make my living situation difficult. In the next breath in that conversation, though, she told me that if the landlord of the house was dubious about renting to me because I am currently unemployed, she would be happy to co-sign with me on the lease.
EVEN WHEN SHE DISAPPROVES, my mom supports my choices! She’s honest with me about how she disagrees, and then goes right on doing everything she can to help me out and make them happen. Such a generous, loving mom is straight out of a storybook, and in so many ways, I cannot even believe that I am so lucky.
I can talk to my mom about everything—my fears, my pride, my love life, my mistakes. I have been raised with an unshakeable faith in her love for me. My parents’ home is open to me any time—and not just to me, but to my friends, who tell me after they visit my parents that they feel they have been welcomed home. When I floated the idea of someday developing a show on their beautiful and secluded 5 acres in Trinidad, they didn’t even blink at the notion of hosting a bunch of actors and theatre technicians for months. My mom over the course of my life has helped me develop a strong sense of self; an independence that can only come from knowing that if I need it, I will always be taken care of; the belief that I am attractive and intelligent and capable of whatever I put my mind to. I could not be who I am today, doing the crazy things that I do, if it weren’t for the support, applause, love and validation that I have gotten all my life from my mother whenever I needed it, and often even when I didn’t.
Not only does she support me in a hundred thousand ways, she also happens to be intellectually brilliant, beautiful, an amazing musician, an admirably straightforward communicator, intuitive and compassionate, accepting, inquisitive, generous, and creative. I’ve spent much of my life looking up to her, learning from her, and emulating her. To be blessed with a truly admirable person as the woman who raised me feels like extra, like oh-my-gosh-what-wonderful-thing-did-I-do-in-a-past-life-to-deserve-this, like even more than I am entitled to as a human being growing up in this crazy world. If I stray into sappiness, forgive me. My mom deserves sappy. My mom rocks.
Thanks, Mom! I love you!
xoxo
Alissa
So, a year ago, partially inspired by the Artist’s Way, I quit my lucrative day-job to run my theatre company and make some plays with uninterrupted focus. I decided to live on my savings account for as long as I could in order to complete the two-part project of Medea Knows Best, apply for our 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status (which we are shortly being awarded! Whee!) and start building the infrastructure for a company that more and more I am beginning to regard as my life’s work.
Did my mom freak out at my abandoning a stable income for an artistic dream that makes me approximately $0 annually, at 27 years old? No. She got excited for me, told all her friends how proud of me she was, donated money to Nebunele, and traveled to San Francisco with my dad (who helped build the set) to see the finished product.
This month, I decided to leave my cute little studio apartment on Capitol Hill to move into a beautiful big house, farther out of the city center, with partner-in-crime Claytie. We needed a third roommate to make the house affordable, and for a time were considering a good friend of ours who also happens to be an ex-boyfriend of mine. When I told my mom about that, she let me know that she thought it was a bad idea, as that would have the potential to create emotional storms that could wreck my relationship with him and make my living situation difficult. In the next breath in that conversation, though, she told me that if the landlord of the house was dubious about renting to me because I am currently unemployed, she would be happy to co-sign with me on the lease.
EVEN WHEN SHE DISAPPROVES, my mom supports my choices! She’s honest with me about how she disagrees, and then goes right on doing everything she can to help me out and make them happen. Such a generous, loving mom is straight out of a storybook, and in so many ways, I cannot even believe that I am so lucky.
I can talk to my mom about everything—my fears, my pride, my love life, my mistakes. I have been raised with an unshakeable faith in her love for me. My parents’ home is open to me any time—and not just to me, but to my friends, who tell me after they visit my parents that they feel they have been welcomed home. When I floated the idea of someday developing a show on their beautiful and secluded 5 acres in Trinidad, they didn’t even blink at the notion of hosting a bunch of actors and theatre technicians for months. My mom over the course of my life has helped me develop a strong sense of self; an independence that can only come from knowing that if I need it, I will always be taken care of; the belief that I am attractive and intelligent and capable of whatever I put my mind to. I could not be who I am today, doing the crazy things that I do, if it weren’t for the support, applause, love and validation that I have gotten all my life from my mother whenever I needed it, and often even when I didn’t.
Not only does she support me in a hundred thousand ways, she also happens to be intellectually brilliant, beautiful, an amazing musician, an admirably straightforward communicator, intuitive and compassionate, accepting, inquisitive, generous, and creative. I’ve spent much of my life looking up to her, learning from her, and emulating her. To be blessed with a truly admirable person as the woman who raised me feels like extra, like oh-my-gosh-what-wonderful-thing-did-I-do-in-a-past-life-to-deserve-this, like even more than I am entitled to as a human being growing up in this crazy world. If I stray into sappiness, forgive me. My mom deserves sappy. My mom rocks.
Thanks, Mom! I love you!
xoxo
Alissa
Reader Comments (1)
I loved this post. Your mom is rad.