An Ode to My Mother

My mom celebrates every holiday in some way. I still get a basket from the Easter Bunny yearly. Every St. Patrick’s Day, she drives around town, delivering loaves of Irish soda bread from a local German bakery to all her friends.

My mom is Dorothy number three. My great-grandmother was the first Dorothy. She then named her first child, and only daughter, after herself. My grandmother then had 12 children before her final child, my mother. The doctor who delivered her (and all of my grandmother’s children), who my mom insisted I mention was black, told my grandmother that after 12 kids, it was about time she named one after herself. She did.

Naturally, my mom had to continue the tradition. So the D in DK stands for Dorothy. My mom thought about calling me Ivy, as in “IV,” the Roman numeral for four. Instead, a preschool teacher gave me the nickname DK, and it just stuck. My full first name is Dorothy-Kate. I still don’t know what my mom was thinking with that.

My mom and I have a bit of a complicated relationship, as mothers and daughters tend to. She was my caregiver when I was sick. She took care of every logistic, especially insurance. I am sure that I would be dead without her.

But being in a constant state of crisis for 10+ years takes its toll. She was the main person in my life by a significant margin for a long time. We were incredibly codependent, and we still are a little bit. My happiness is her happiness and vice versa. But honestly, that is what the situation called for at one point.

As I mentioned, my mom is the youngest of 13 kids.

That’s a lot of kids.

They also had no money or resources, so there was bound to be strife. My mother and Uncle Brian took on caregiver roles to assist my grandmother.

All of the kids dealt with the trauma of abuse, poverty, and neglect in their own ways. Several turned to drugs, others to anger. My mom turned to staying busy and taking care of others, often at her own (and my) expense.

She was born in the 1960s. She grew up fast, the definition of a parentified child. The first 20-something years of her life were spent in Hempstead on Long Island.

Hempstead has a deeply Long Island history. Right around when my mom was born, the town suffered white flight and severe divestment after many years of neighbors fighting tooth and nail to keep black people out. The Conroys (my mom’s maiden name) were among the only white families to stay. My grandmother was a woman of strong morals and believed everyone should be treated with respect and dignity. She even ran a homeless shelter in town later in her life.

I think growing up as a white girl in a majority-black neighborhood had its difficulties for my mother, but that’s her story to tell.

She eventually went to Nassau Community College before getting a scholarship to Cornell University, where she met my father, an alumnus 16 years her senior.

Immediately after graduation, she began her tenure on the Citibank trading floor. Being a woman in finance in the 80s and 90s was fraught, to say the least.

When we watched Wolf of Wall Street, she would comment on everything she had seen happen in real-time. Little people throwing, the Boom Boom Room, the cash booths, and the all-around male domination.

However, she claims some of the worst perpetrators of psychological warfare were women. It was every woman for herself in, truly, a man’s world.

My mom is an incredibly smart, ambitious, and capable woman. She’ll often have multiple conference calls going on at once. And, like my grandmother, her morals are unshakeable. She can be a bit blunt, sometimes even harsh, but she would never step on anyone to get ahead, let alone another woman.

That hesitancy to be cutthroat, in addition to my illness, stunted her career in some ways. I try not to feel guilty, but I do.

Her workaholism affected me, as well. It kept her so busy that she couldn’t pay as much attention to me as might have been desired or necessary. But I get it. I truly do.

Growing up in poverty alters your brain chemistry. To my mom, money equals security, and she isn’t entirely wrong about that. I would never have received the treatment I did without financial resources. Did she take it too far? I can’t answer that question without a time machine, but there isn’t a doubt in my mind that she was doing what she thought was best for me, always.

My mom likes to tell young parents, “more picnics.” Picnics were and are one of my favorite activities. It’s more about spending quality time together than anything else.

Even if it’s just me bringing a book and her bringing her gigantic mug of tea to the park at the end of our street, I relish spending time with my mother.

Because she is the person I love most in this world and I know for a fact that I am hers.