I remembered my moms on Mother’s Day.
My first mom, the biological one, I never knew. She gave me up for adoption at birth. I was born a ward of the state.
I learned a few things from records and family calls.
I have never been curious about her. People hear your adopted and the think you have this burning curiosity to know your biological family.
I never have.
I know this much. She gave birth to me in 1975, back when abortion was legal and new. She could have aborted me. She didn’t.
So, I got to live. That’s a gift for which I’m thankful.
Wherever she is, happy Mother’s Day.
Mom 1.0, of my Finney family, loved to be a mother. She cared for, I think this number is right, 136 foster babies. That’s on top of the four biological children she raised and adopted daughter.
I was the last of her foster children, brought into her and Dad’s home on Lynner Drive when I was 3½ days old.
My oldest brother complains that I talk about our mom in negative terms too much and too often.
So it goes.
Brothers do not always agree, nor do they have the same perspective on people and things.
He’s 81. I turn 50 this summer. We do not have a generation gap in our family. We have a generation gorge.
Mom 1.0 showed love through material things.
Even after my folks went broke repairing the mansion off Iowa Highway 92 four miles west of Winterset, Christmas and birthdays were greeted with an avalanche of presents.
Mom was born in 1919. She grew up in the Great Depression.
She grew up without. By the time I became their son, they had plenty. Dad was a successful salesman. Mom was a homemaker.
Mom and I used to walk down the steep hill on Lynner Drive to Harding Road and the east on Douglas Avenue to the Target that used to be by the river there. There are government offices there today.
She would shop clothes and look for things for the house.
I walked back to the toy aisle and stared at the “Star Wars” and “G.I. Joe” guys. I went alone. It was a different time, before Johnny Gosche and Eugene Martin.
The toys $2 or $3 back then. Mom would buy me one or two and I we would walk together back up the hill.
She would make us lunch. I went back to my room to battle the forces of evil with my new plastic heroes.
Those were good days. There were other days that were not as good. Those days left scars that I’m still trying to heal today, some 35 years after she died.
But it is Mother’s Day.
So happy Mother’s Day, Mom. I hope you and Dad are enjoying a cloud somewhere in heaven.
Then, of course, there was Mom 2.0.
She was Mom 1.0’s hairdresser.
Our relationship sets up like an old joke. “They say women tell their hairdressers everything, well my mom gave hers her kid.”
I was cool and standoffish with Parents 2.0 when I arrived at the stately east Des Moines manor in the late 1900s.
I refused to be loved; I refused to love. It hurt to lose both my parents by 14. I was not going to hurt like that again.
This is how a 15-year-old boy thinks. Just slip my allowance and food under the door. I’ll be gone when I’m 18.
I know this wounded Mom 2.0. She couldn’t figure out why I wouldn’t accept their love.
But Mom 2.0 was a tenacious human.
For all my grumpiness and bitterness, she my ever bark with kindness, love, acceptance, fine home-cooked meals with tall glasses of common sense.
Mom 2.0 went to a lot of baseball games and baseball destinations not because she held any love of the game. She went because I loved the game.
Through her, I knew unconditional love. She died in 2023 after a pair of painful back surgeries. That’s discombobulated me more than anything what feels like 20 years of free falling.
I sat in my chair and remembered a warm night in Detroit at old Tiger Stadium.
The Yankees were in town. Don Mattingly hit a home run, one of only nine dingers he had that year.
Mom 2.0 cheered with me.
I see it all through the fog of memory. I feel warm, safe, and loved. Everybody should know that feeling. Mom 2.0, and Dad 2.0 as well gave that to me.
She saved me.
All my moms saved me. Biological mom chose to have me and realized she couldn’t take care of me, so she gave up for adoptions.
Mom 1.0 adopted me, and though there were tough times, I was spared the ravages of the foster care system.
Mom 2.0 saved me a third time, from the despair of grief and the label of orphan.
I don’t know who I would be without these women. I don’t want to know.
I am a deeply flawed person. Most of us are, at least to some degree.
But when it comes to moms, I’ve been triple blessed.
Daniel P. Finney is a member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative, but don’t hold that against them. Please visit their page to view a full roster of writers and consider subscribing to their columns. Writing is hard work; people ought to get paid for it. If you enjoy it, throw them a couple of bucks. They earned it. But subscribe to me first, because I’m a ruthless, money-grubbing capitalist like that.
Moms are great!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts about your Moms. It’s always hard to lose the good ones. I’ve been lucky, too.