By Bernadette D’Auria
Dear Mother,
It is rare that a child can come out to their mother and be met not only with acceptance, but with a shared relationship in the yearning that exists in their heart. I remember being so nervous to tell you. You and father had split up, we were still adjusting to our new living situation, and being a single mom never looked like an easy job. Every night you would come home exhausted from work and immediately begin to work again in the kitchen, getting ready to feed our ungrateful mouths. It was on one of these very nights that I had decided to tell you.
Unbeknownst to you, that very morning I had woken up from an intense dream, one that feels so real that when you wake up you can feel the shadow of another person’s touch still caressing your cheek. In all my 14 years of life, I had never had a dream that had undone everything that I had ever known about myself. Sure, I had been wrestling with the term “bisexual” for months at this point, but it wasn’t like I was going out and experimenting with these thoughts. No, I was too shy for that. Instead I just looked intensely at every woman who came across my path, assessing their eyes, their cheeks, their lips, their breasts, their hips…. I was an addict for the feminine physique even if I had never touched it. Having that dream was revolutionary for me, and there is nobody in the world this girl wanted to tell more about a life-changing venture than her own mother.
So when you finally came home, exhausted from work and ready to start dinner and put a meal on the table for my siblings and me, here I came bounding into the kitchen with a mission. But as soon as I saw you, I stopped, wondering if this was really the right thing for me to do. What if everything I had ever thought about us was wrong, that despite all the claims that you loved me and cared for my happiness, that the words that I was so desperately trying to say would instantly shatter it? You must have sensed it in the way I was holding myself, because as soon as you saw me you uttered the words, “Baby, what’s wrong?”
And that’s when I said those three very important, life-changing words aloud for the first time: “I like girls.” And then before you could open your mouth I immediately tacked on, “But I like boys too!” To which you replied, “So do I, now what would you like for dinner?” I misunderstood you at first, thinking that you were misunderstanding me. “No mommy,” I said. “I mean that I like girls and boys… romantically.” And you replied, “I know what you meant, and I meant what I said. Me, too. Now what would you like for dinner?”
And you looked up at me, for at this point I was already taller than you, and you were smiling softly at me with the love in your eyes that you always held when you looked at me. And as I stared at you, trying so hard to come up with a response, I realized I did not need one, that there would be times for me to respond to this later, for the rest of our time together on this planet. We could unpack the feeling that I had been keeping all day from you, that you had been keeping for 14 years from me, in favor of the bigger question: What was it that I wanted for dinner?
Love,
Your Confidant
Bernadette D’Auria is a bisexual woman who currently lives in southern Virginia, in the U.S. When she is not shaping lives as a high school teacher, she can be found reading any book she can get her hands on.