I’m not entirely sure where to begin eulogizing a woman like my mother, Wendy Hanawalt. So you and she will have to forgive me stealing from one of our favorite Poets.
Cummings wrote:
if there are any heavens my mother will(all by herself)have
one. It will not be a pansy heaven nor
a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but
it will be a heaven of blackred roses
My mother, Wendy, was no lily-of-the-valley. And while she loved the pansy that she raised, she didn’t raise me to be fragile or wilting.
Even more than black red roses, my mother was like Scottish Thistle. Prickly. Resilient.
She cultivated her strength in unfavorable ground. She grew tall and vibrant at a time when indelicate women were just as likely to be cut down.
My mother lived a storied life, and I grew up captivated by the stories she told. She was a journalist, a musician, an activist, an actor, and an artist.
I grew up in awe of my mother’s talents and her fierceness. On top of all those things she was, she was a fighter. She fought for me as early as I can remember.
When, in grade school, I wanted to go to my class’s Halloween party as the Wicked Witch of the West, she pulled me aside to tell me some people, for some reason, believed that only girls can be witches. She told me my classmates might make fun of me. She told me she would love and support me anyway.
They did… and she did.
I appreciate, now, how much courage that took—just as much if not more than the direct confrontations with homophobic school administrators and community members. To let someone you love make their own path, knowing how hard it might be for them to navigate—and for you to watch.
But my mother knew you can’t shade your loved ones from pain, without also keeping them from finding their own light.
While I may have been free to clear my own path in life, I never walked it alone. She was unwavering in her advocacy not just for me as her son, but for my right to be in the world as a gay man. I could make of my life what I wanted; and whatever pains I risked, losing her love was never one.
If not for her, I would not have survived this world.
In that way, I think she and I are together like Thistle. Thistle is a biennial plant. Its full lifecycle takes two years. Its first year, it plants seeds. It grows roots. It survives. It’s not until the second that it flowers.
My mom never fully felt like she had flowered herself.
She never did finish her book. She doesn’t leave behind a large catalog of music or portfolio of art.
But on our last day together, the last thing she said to me was, “You are my life’s work.”
She was tough, indelicate, and sometimes stinging. She grew stubborn roots in soil inhospitable to girls with jagged edges and soft boys. We survived together until I could flower.
There are still those who see women like Wendy, and men like me as weeds. But by the time this second year of ours comes to an end, and my own cells disperse like so many thistle seeds carried by white pappi through the air, I know the love we shared will have planted itself in new soil.
Until then, I will stay soft, with just enough nettle to survive to see it bloom.
