Coming to America

About a year after I started drawing full time, I raised my prices for the first time.  I was tired of hearing that my pencil portraits were “reasonable.”  I like money.  A lot.  I’m not interested in being a bargain.  In fact, when it comes to getting cash for my time, I’m fine with being right on the verge of rude but hopefully not obnoxious.  That's a hard balance to find sometimes.


Rome Gulliford picked up a price sheet at one of my earliest shows during the first traumatic months after I got fired from my corporate job.  For more than a year, she saved the price sheet and saved her pennies. She wanted to give her mother a special portrait of her brothers and sisters… all seven of them.


I kept my base prices the same, but after the first year, I doubled my fee for each additional subject from $25 to $50.  By the time Rome called me over a year later, the price for a seven subject portrait had increased by $175.  It was a Mother’s Day order and I was swamped.  A good business person knows when to make an exception, and when to stand firm.  If it’s pouring rain, nobody’s putting umbrellas in the clearance bin. 

Rome was crushed that she had saved so long and needed to wait until Christmas if she was going to get this portrait for her mother.  I’m not always the shrewdest business person or any other kind of person.  To her relief, I told her I would draw her portrait for the old price. 

When the portrait was complete and I heard her story, I was glad that I did.

Rome was the first person I asked to interview for my book, rather than telling the stories from memory.  She sat on the floor with me at my coffee table and we talked like old friends.  Hers was the story I meant to tell when I wrote about my mom last post, but once we ladies get started on our mothers, it's hard to stop.  Rome knows what I mean.

 

Rome’s mother brought her six little children to the United States from Mexico in 1975.  They had nothing but the clothes on their backs – no possessions and not a single photograph.  During the thirty plus years they’ve lived in Chicago, Rome’s mom treasured this snapshot that was taken for their visa and the six tiny photographs used for their applications for citizenship.  Times were tough and a camera was an impossible luxury.

  

“We came to America when I was six years old,” Rome told me.  “My mother was 27 and she already had six children, each born within a year and a half of the next.  She was technically a single parent because my father had been working in the United States as a welder for years.  When my grandmother became sick and died, my mother couldn’t bear to stay in Mexico without her.  My grandmother was only 44 years old."


Wow.  Um, I'm 45.  Just saying.  Also, what if Joey had six kids already?

“Life was so hard there," Rome went on.  "My mom had almost no education.  She was cooking for her family when she was only 7 years old.  She married my father at 18, had her first baby at 21 and also cared for her younger siblings when my grandmother got sick.  There were no washing machines, no running water.  The water for all of that laundry had to be hauled by hand from a well.  My mother had to wash clothes, dirty bedding and soiled cloth diapers on a washboard every single day, rubbing her hands raw.  She works nonstop to this day. I don’t know where she finds her energy.”

Oh Lord, no.  It still stinks.

I shivered at the thought.  I don't have the slightest idea what real labor is like.  Imagining Rome’s mother slaving away made me feel embarrassed for throwing a snit fit at the dryer stink that keeps happening.  When my friend Lauri had her kitchen redone, I thought of her as a desperate frontier woman for several months, especially since she has four kids, which is far too many for me to imagine, let alone six. 

In order to leave Mexico, Rome’s mother dreamed and saved and scrimped.  She scraped up enough from the meager money sent home from her husband to bring her six young children to America.  She joined her husband in Chicago where she knew nobody and didn’t speak a word of English. 


“My mother’s life has always been all about our family.  She never sits still - cooking, cleaning, worrying about everyone.  She was strict and protective; we were never allowed to sleep over anywhere else.  If we asked to stay at a friend’s, my mother would scold us, ‘You have your own bed, this is where you stay.  Why do you need to sleep somewhere else?'"


About eight years before I met her, Rome had returned to Mexico with her mother for the first time since they'd left.  It had been more than fifteen years. 

“Her brother was very ill,” Rome explained.  “My mom had no intention of ever going back there; she had such painful memories.  She wanted to block that part of her life.” 


Rome’s eyes glistened and she swallowed, pausing to wipe her eyes with the back of her hand.  “I don’t like to think about how my mom suffered,” she said quietly.  “I didn’t blame her for not wanting to go back.  But I told her that she might never get to see her brother again.  I told her I’d go with her, although I was nervous about how she would react to facing everything she’d gone through.

“It hurt her deeply to see that life is still so bad there.  The poverty is terrible.  There are kids running around with no shoes on gravel roads, kicking a can because they don’t have a ball.  It’s depressing.  The houses look like they are ready to be bulldozed over."

Rome looked out my window in thought.  I realized the window was pretty dirty and I felt lazy on a whole new level.

“I don’t even know how she got us all out of Mexico.  We were so little and there were so many of us.  Everyone had to walk long distances to get anywhere.  I remember my brother was sick for awhile and my mother had to take us on a long walk to the bus depot and then endure a 2 ½ hour, steamy bus ride to get to a doctor in the nearest city, all while toting two toddlers, a baby in diapers and one on the way.  And then do it all over again to get home.

“It makes me feel so lucky to have this life and so foolish for complaining about the small stuff.  I’m grateful we got out of Mexico.  And yet, at the same time, I feel bad that there are so many people who can’t get out.  They’re stuck with nothing; no resources, and no education.  They are vulnerable and naïve, they believe whatever they are told.  If they were better educated, maybe they could lift themselves up.”

Thoughts swirled in my head, listening to Rome, of the angry disdain some people have about immigrants in our country, despite the fact that every one of us is here because of dreams for a better life like Rome’s mother’s.  I’d heard similar stories about Mexico from our beloved Raquel, who cared for my boys back in my corporate life.  How hard she worked, how shockingly little she charged us, how absolutely devoted she was. 

 “My father goes back to Mexico at least three times a year,” Rome continued.  He brings all the donations he can cram into his van.  He is like Santa Claus.  He drives all the way there from Chicago.”

Since Rome’s story had been mostly about her mother, I wondered about her dad.  Was he still around?  I was getting the picture that perhaps they had divorced.

“No, my father was always around,” Rome said.  “But my mom was both our mother and our father.  She handled the house, our needs, our discipline, caring for us, everything.   After my father put in his 40 hours of work, he figured he was done - he’d put in his time and now he could relax.  But my mom was working just as hard and her job never ended, she never rested.  She was there for everything, attending every parent/teacher conference by herself.  My dad sat back at home, waiting for my mother’s report on what was going on.  It’s part of their culture and their generation.” 

Rome’s mother never attended school in America, there wasn’t any time or money.  But she did put herself through driving school on the sly, without her husband’s consent. 

“When we were growing up in Chicago, we dragged huge army duffle bags full of laundry up three flights of stairs, up and down with the dirty and clean clothes, to a Laundromat three blocks away.  Hispanic men like my father were too macho to drive laundry around.  My mother was tired of waiting for him to drive her, so she learned to drive without him knowing.  He probably was nervous that she’d gained that little bit of power.  She was proud to be able to go where she wanted to go.

“There was always a distance between my parents.  Between all of us, really.  From what I’ve experienced and seen in my parents’ generation, they are not very affectionate.  My mother was all business.  She held the little ones, but once we were old enough to help, we were expected to do our part, to get to work.

“In fact," Rome said, leaning forward, "I remember the first time I gave my mom a hug.  It wasn’t until I was in my twenties.  I don’t remember what prompted me to do it, but I remember making the decision and surprising myself that I was going to try.  I was so nervous getting that close to her, breaking the barrier of her busy, personal space, wondering how she would react.  She was surprised too, but she hugged me back.  While we were growing up, she showed us in many ways how she felt about us, but she never told us.  She never told us, ‘I love you,’ out loud until we were adults.  She didn’t know how; her upbringing was just so serious and hard. 

“Today, my mother is very loving with her grandchildren.  I think that the grandkids have helped her develop the ability to express her love to her own kids.  If I’m mad at my kids and my father hears me, he tells me not to yell at them.  But he always yelled at us!” 

When Rome picked up her finished portrait she was thrilled to see that the six tiny photographs her mother had lovingly saved, attached to an old piece of paper with yellowing tape, were transformed into a portrait that included their baby brother who had been born in America.  Rome’s children played with mine while she and her husband chatted with me. 

“I can’t believe Rome actually spent money on this portrait,” her husband teased.  “She’s so frugal.  I can’t ever get her to spend any money on something she wants.” 

Rome laughed.  “My mom never wants us to spend any money on her, either.  I guess I’m the same way.  She never accepts a gift without complaining about it.  She’ll want to know how much we spent on this portrait and she’ll be angry we spent it on her.  She doesn‘t like to be the center of attention and would rather focus her attention on someone else.  She’s a private person.”

Rome looked out my dirty window again and her eyes welled up.  “She was really very alone, all her life.  She never had a best friend to talk to.  She’s kept everything inside.  It wasn’t until I became an adult and I went through a divorce that I fully realized how she’s always been there for me.  I’ve gotten really close to her and a day doesn’t go by that I don’t call to see how she is doing.  I can always tell if she is bothered by something, but I have to drag it out of her before she’ll tell me.  She doesn’t know how to ask for help.

“If she tells me that her faucet is leaking, we drive the 77 miles to her house in Chicago from Wisconsin.  My husband gets frustrated sometimes because I have siblings who live near her.  But I want to be the one who is there for her.  No matter how minor it is, I feel pressure to take responsibility.  I want things my way, just like her."

Rome holds up her portrait, looking at the faces of her siblings.  “This is so beautiful.  I think she’s going to love it.”  She looks at me and gives me a big beautiful smile.  “I love my mom.  She has been through so much on her own.  I know that she’s tough, but I want her to know that she never has to go through anything by herself, ever again.”

Remind me to give my mom an extra big hug the next time she comes over. 

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Bronze Tablets and the Golden Corral

A few years after I got canned and started drawing full time, my mother retired and offered to help me with my business.  Other than one brief nasty, wretched teenage stage, my mom and I have always been very, very close.  Remember, she's the one who told me to sleep with my future husband.


My mother has a killer mind that she can laser focus on learning or analyzing anything.  She majored in Spanish and when I was growing up, she took French and Russian and Japanese classes just for fun.  She graduated in the top 1% of her class and her name is engraved on a Bronze Tablet in the University of Illinois library.  I used to trace my fingers along her name for strength on my way to an algebra torture chamber in the library basement.  And what do you know, she did help.  Because my name ended up on the Bronze Tablet too.

My mommy is smart and I am not that much of a dumb ass.

All my life, my mother has been beyond supportive, enthusiastically appreciating us, always putting us first. My father is a complex, intense person and my mother just might have been the one and only person alive on the planet who was absolutely perfect for him.  She lifted us up when we were down, she laughed her HEAD off at our jokes and stories.  She sits in her chair at the end of her dining room table with a book, her face alight with complete interest at almost everything we have to say.  The rest of us have a scorching case of verbal diarrhea in my family and that poor woman has had A LOT to listen to. 

My mother is half intelligentsia and half Ed McMahon, often content to listen and encourage.  She's my cheerleader, my friend, my careful critic; the one who wraps me in a long hug that makes me feel loved to my very core.  I rest my head on her shoulder and sigh... her hugs drain a bit of my tension.

Families are complicated and I've got a big ole Golden Corral buffet of that going on, much of which begins and ends in my screwed up stew of a head.

Allow me to scoop up some more weird shit and big fat hurt feelings. 
I can't get enough!

No matter how twisted or sad things can occasionally get, my mom is right there to promise that all will be well.  Life just doesn't get under her skin the way it does for me.  I sulk at my half empty glass of wine while my mom happily sips her half full manhattan.  Let's drink to being more like my mom.  If only.

Before my mom retired, I spent every spare stolen moment at my parents' house, which is 2.6 miles from mine.  Once the kids were fed, I couldn't get there fast enough to talk to my mom and tell her every random thing I did or thought or heard or saw.  She'll let me prattle on endlessly.

Once she started coming over to help me with my work, things changed a little.  As much as I find joy in drawing something that is precious to someone, my work can be stressful.  There is so much detail involved in finding the work, preparing the layout (which can combine more elements than you'd think), adjusting the final drawing to the client's satisfaction and managing to get paid for it.  I can pretty much throw a fit and lose my shit at any point during the process.  God freaking forbid something goes wrong with my computer or printer, it's full metal jacket panic spiral time.  I used to have my little mental breakdowns on my own, but once my mommy was here regularly, I had an audience.  On one hand, she can be wonderfully soothing, stroking my shoulder and making sympathetic noises.  On the other hand, she's a mom.  And no matter how glorious your mom is, there are stressful times in your life when the LAST thing you want is your MOM "helping". 

That's okay, really, I've got it, Mom.

Over the last four or five years, I've tried to work through some of my crap, trying to adjust my own stubborn negativity and protectiveness of my nest and routine.  Sometimes I've had to outright ask my mom to give me space, like when she used to chime in when I dealt with a crabby kid's attitude.  She used to keep me company in the morning while I put layouts together, watching over my shoulder and occasionally pointing things out.  This was not my favorite.  But I know she really, really wants to help.  And if she saw something that needed adjustment, was she supposed to just sit there and say nothing?  Unfortunately for her, I had to say yes.  And she really tries.  We've never had to filter ourselves when we are together, but I needed to protect our relationship.  Familiarity doesn't breed contempt, but it can make me testy.  Most, if not all of my mother's suggestions are helpful in theory; they just aren't helpful to my variable mental health.  I have watched just about every episode of Everybody Loves Raymond, and I know I'm not alone in this.

When my mom arrives at my house each day, it is my cue to quit farting around on the computer.  At first, it was because she would take over and work on a list of stuff I'd compiled.  Later, it was because it was time to go watch a movie together while I draw.  In some ways, it was helpful with my schedule as otherwise, I wouldn't have one.  I am never done with the computer, because I have ADD and I am constantly distracted, which is inconvenient due to the invention of the internet.  I should be doing real work, but instead, I'm probably sniffing around your Facebook vacation photos or writing long emails to my college friends.  When my mom would arrive, I'd get a jolt of work-guilt that I started to associate with her.  Now she calls before she comes and I can tell her to give me a little more time to work, or stalk people or add songs to my ipod shuffle (you know I'm too cheap for a real one.)  My goal is to force myself to stop in time to have lunch with her, at the latest.

I draw my pencil portraits in the corner of my bedroom and my mom has a big comfy chair up there that my dad and my husband Joe bought her for Mother's Day. We have probably watched more movies together in a month than some people see in a year or more.  We love movies and take turns watching our respective Netflix arrivals.  This is the sweet spot of the day with my mom.  We pause the movie to tell each other things we forgot to say or to try and figure out where we've seen an actor or who would have been better for the role.  I almost always remember to put the captions on for her.  I did need to work it out with her that she should leave the room when Joe gets home so he doesn't have to change in the closet.  These things just took awhile to figure out.

In the very beginning, my mom was at my house up to five days a week, from mid morning until dinner time.  My friends would gasp in horror, shaking their heads at the thought.  That's just too much mom for most people.  Now it's more like three days.  I've been really busy with back to back art shows so the last couple weeks were less.

As much as I love having my dear mom's company, I miss the days when I couldn't wait to rush to her house.  I'd get away from the demands of my work and my family and my mom would be waiting there to throw her head back and laugh with me.  We'd talk and talk and drink wine together.  It was a break from the routine for me.  Plus I never felt more special than when I was with with my mom.  She listens with such love and pays me such amazing, personal compliments, I'd feel shy sharing most of them.  She thinks I'm a good mom.  I could never be the rock that she is.  Now I get so much time with her, I don't have much left to say when she's not here.  If I do, I call her and tell her.  Things feel different now since we're always at my house.  It never gets to be about just the two of us anymore, our time is also about running my business and being a mom myself and fighting my losing battle not to be a complete slob.

When we're not together, I feel my mom waiting for me to call her and tell her to come over. I feel like I let her down a little bit when I don't. She's given me her love and support so unconditionally, so wholeheartedly. She just wants to spend time with me. My mom has never been a needy person. She's very introspective and is content with a great book and my father to talk to. My parents keep to themselves and they don't socialize very much. Sometimes I feel a lot of pressure to make sure my mom is getting the attention from me she deserves.  I can't predict my own schedule and we're both at the mercy of my lack of discipline. When I hear the loving hope in her voice over the phone and I've got five hundred things to do, it's hard.

I'm ridiculously lucky to have such a great mom.  Someone commented about her on my last blog entry...

I wish I could get you a mom like mine, Karen Holtkamp.  I am spoiled rotten.  And yet I'm just not as patient with her as I should be.  I snap at her when she crosses one of my changing, shifting boundaries.  I don't want her to talk to me about certain things that most hurt my heart, and yet sometimes I need to talk to her about it.  I don't get the chance to miss my mom and sometimes I miss missing her.  Which is really an awfully greedy thing. 

Mommy, thank you for putting up with my emotional roller coasters and my short fuse.  Thank you for being there for everything and anything.  When you love someone so much, we're responsible for each other.  You handle your responsibilities with such grace, and I handle mine kicking and screaming and muttering and swearing.  I feel like before, when we weren't together so much, you didn't have to see the worst in me.  You just saw the daughter who was always so very eager to be with you.  I hope you can forgive the moments when I take you for granted or when I need some space or when you witness yet another childish panic fit.

I'd be lost without you.