Mother’s Day Smooth Circles I like to think that given a little more time, Mom would have become proud to have a lesbian daughter… by Sally Sheklow

My mom’s best friend Marian came over once a week. Mom shooed me outside during these sessions, but I could hear them from my tree fort.

"Mmm-hmm," Marian’s familiar voice hummed one day.

Mom was asking about "lesbian tendencies." Something to do with girls who hated boys. Did she mean me?

Later, my friend Helen and I sat on my bedroom rug, the Ouija board balanced on our knees. Helen was still a tomboy and could be trusted. Her fingers rested on the Ouija board’s heart-shaped plastic "planchette." Thick lashes cast pointy shadows on her cheeks. Ribbons of sandalwood incense curled in the air. My knees felt warm where they pressed against Helen’s jeans. Hot, in fact.

"Go ahead and ask your question," Helen coaxed.

My face burned. "Do I … have lesbian tendencies?"

Ouija jerked into action. It pulled our hands in rhythmic circles at the center of the board. The planchette’s widening orbit brushed equally close to YES and NO.

It stopped circling and shot to YES and stayed there.

A jumble of feelings spilled over me. I was embarrassed, relieved, shocked. I had hoped to rule out the possibility, not prove it. Would Helen still be my friend? Was I sick in the head? Would this excuse me from wearing lipstick like my teenage babysitter? How reliable was a Ouija board, anyway? I wished I could faint and wake up with amnesia.

By the time I was in college, I knew that lots of artists and free thinkers were homosexuals, but I didn’t know any personally. Or so I thought.

One day Thea, the coordinator of the Women’s Center where I volunteered, invited me to stay for a collective meeting.

"As a lesbian…" Thea pressed her palm to her chest.

Lesbian? A real lesbian right here in the same room? The next day a guest in Women’s Studies class introduced herself and added, "I am a lesbian." I nearly fell out of my seat.

Before long I experienced the sexual side of homosexuality. A group of us had gone for a moonlight swim. I dunked under the cool water and swam with my eyes closed. I imagined being a whale, a sleek sea mammal at home with her pod in the black liquid night. When I surfaced, one of the women in the collective, Kitty, swam up behind me. We floated together in the wavy band of moonlight on the dark water.

"Would you like to come home and make love with me?" Kitty whispered.

Indecision was not one of the feelings that surged through me. My official lesbian papers were notarized that night.

The next day I wrote, "Dear Mom, I am a lesbian. It feels natural. I’m happy and fulfilled and part of a movement to liberate women from stifling, sex-role stereotyped relationships."

She never mentioned that letter. When anyone asked about me, she said, "Sally is doing very well at college." Her standard reply for the next 25 years.

She carried a wallet snapshot of me–taken years after I’d told her I was a lesbian– with a guy from the food co-op giving me a birthday kiss on the cheek. I never did get her to replace that picture with one of me driving the forklift or competing in a Kung Fu tournament or, God forbid, kissing a girlfriend.

On a visit home I pressed her about it, "Why can’t you accept me for who I am?"

She screwed up her face, disgusted. "It’s unnatural, Sal. Like mating with an ape."

I was stunned. This bigot was my own mom. My Jewish mom who lost countless relatives to anti-Semites of Czarist Russia and Nazi Germany. My liberal mom who had her window broken by racists because she spoke out for civil rights in the 1950s. Couldn’t she make the connection?

After Enid and I had been together for a few years, Mom began to warm up. I like to think that given a little more time, Mom would have become proud to have a lesbian daughter. But cancer overshadowed those concerns. My world became focused on positioning her pillow, the warm washcloth, the spoonful of broth.

During those final weeks, our time together was sweet, affectionate. I had set her up with a hospital bed in the family room and I slept in her bedroom. I snuggled with her in the mornings while the hospice nurses took vital signs, adjusted tubing, kept her clean and dry.

Visitors stopped coming. They couldn’t stand to see her so weak, eyes sunken, hair lost to chemo, death hovering. To me she looked beautiful, angelic, extra-terrestrial.

On what turned out to be her last day, I woke up early and climbed in with her. The night nurse still dozed in the easy chair. Mom reached for my hand, drew me in, squeezed hello. Welcome. Stay close.

I kissed her cheek, more bone than flesh now. I petted her arm, thinner than a child’s wrist. Her shrunken body, tiny next to mine, leaned into my caress. I stroked her silken skin, her bloated abdomen. Slow soothing circles. Belly that bore me, my first home, I thought. My touch spoke my wordless truth. My sweet mother. I honor you. Thank you for life. I love you.

"Mmmmm," she sighed. Pure acceptance.