What Jamie’s Mom Said
Parents see things differently when they’ve been paying attention. And sometimes what they say is exactly what you needed to hear from someone who wasn’t you.
Jamie || Mom || Family || Acceptance
Imet Jamie’s mother, Dr. Adaeze Okafor, properly for the first time in late March, at their apartment on a Sunday afternoon. We had crossed paths several times at the kitchen table, and she had always been warm in the way of someone who knew about me before meeting me, but this was different — this was a sitting-down conversation, with tea, in the small and comfortable living room that had the quality of a space inhabited by people who read a lot and moved things around to find the best arrangement. Dr. Okafor taught sociology at Portland Community College and had the specific quality of intellectual engagement that certain academics had — the one where they were interested in everything as both personal and sociological phenomenon simultaneously, where their curiosity about another person was also always curiosity about the world through that person. She was small, like Jamie, with the same quality of complete presence in a room, the sense of taking up exactly the right amount of space.
She asked about the debate season first, which was a safe beginning and which I knew she was using to feel out the conversation’s texture before moving to what she actually wanted to talk about. I told her about state. She said: “Jamie told me about the argument you gave. The constructive speech.” “Yes,” I said. “They said it was the most honest argument they’d heard in a competitive round,” she said. “They were effusive, actually, which is unusual for Jamie. They’re usually precise rather than effusive.” “The argument had personal relevance,” I said. “I know,” she said. “That’s what Jamie told me. And I know — ” She paused. “I know something happened this year. With you. Something that changed your relationship to the argument.” She looked at me with the careful directness that Jamie had clearly inherited. “I don’t need the specifics,” she said. “But I want you to know that I see what it produced. In you and in my kid.” She paused. “Jamie is happier,” she said. “More fully themselves. And I know that you’re part of that, and I know that it goes both directions, and I want you to know that you are welcome here.” She said this with the simplicity of a statement that covered a lot of ground. I sat with it for a moment. “Thank you,” I said. “I — this year has been — ” “You can just say thank you,” she said, kindly. “You don’t have to explain the whole year.” I smiled. “Thank you,” I said. She refilled my tea. Jamie came out of their room with the expression of someone who had been listening to the last thirty seconds of a conversation and was pleased with it. “Are you two having the talk?” they said, setting down next to me on the couch. “We had a version of it,” Dr. Okafor said. “It went well.” “I assumed it would,” Jamie said. They looked at me sideways. “She likes everyone I like,” they said. “No,” their mother said. “I am very particular. You have been an excellent judge of character.” Jamie rolled their eyes with the affectionate exasperation of a child who has heard this before. I sat between them in the small living room with the books and the tea and the plants and thought: this is a family. This is what a family looks like when it works. This is something I am allowed to be part of.