Each of us is handed a mother when we are formed and brought into this world, and the only prerequisite for the job has absolutely nothing to do with the ability to raise a child well.
For many — myself included — that makes the other women who come into our lives and who help fill some of the gaps left by the mother we are assigned a true blessing.
For me, there is no greater example of that than Jane Gray.
It is extremely hard for me to use her first name, because Mrs. Gray is Mrs. Gray and to call her anything other than that just seems wrong. But for a very key two years in my life, Mrs. Gray was the mom that I needed to help me get to the point where I could spread my wings and start to fly.
That Mrs. Gray came into my life at all is a weird story. My best friend in high school was a kid who couldn’t stand me and who I couldn’t stand in middle school. Lindy — and yes, that’s a “he” (he was named after Charles Lindbergh — was assigned to me when he moved to suburban NY from Texas. I was the guy who was supposed to show him around the school and make him feel welcomed.
We hated each other.
So as soon as Lindy had his feet on the ground, he was more than happy to be rid of his “helper,” and I was ecstatic to be free from this crazy Texan.
Then, in high school, we found ourselves hanging around in the same group of people, which — miracle of miracles — included real actual girls. There’s nothing that can bond two young teen boys more closely than the presence of females who are friends themselves and who dig both of you. Lindy and I somehow realized that, for however different we were, we had a good time when we were hanging out. And again, have I mentioned the presence of real actual girls who liked us?
Lindy and I became friends, then good friends, then best friends. Long before texting and social media, we would hop on the phone on a Saturday night and watch a boxing match together from our respective homes, annoying anyone else who might have needed to make a call.
I remember his sister from middle school. She was two years younger and was known by me only as “Lindy’s little sister.” Jami was fun to pick on in a playful way. I might have hated her brother, but Jami was fine as far as sixth-graders went to an incredibly cool eighth-grader like me.
And then, as a junior, I broke up with my girlfriend of six months. Jami, a freshman at the time, had begun circling in our orbit a few months before. So when I was suddenly newly single, Jami made her intentions to be by my side very clear.
Here’s the thing: I really liked spending time with Jami. She was funny. She was sweet. She was pretty. She was kind … incredibly kind. And so, with junior prom rapidly approaching, I faced a dilemma: How in God’s name do you tell your best friend — a tough, rough-and-tumble Texan — that you wanted to ask his sister?
I don’t remember exactly how I did it, but I do remember him giving his blessing … with a caveat: “If you hurt her, I’ll kill you. And that’s only after my father kills you.”
It was a point well taken.
So Jami and I went to the junior prom and started dating exclusively. She was a huge blessing in what had developed into a turbulent time in my life.
And this is where Mrs. Gray comes into the equation.
Mrs. Gray is Lindy and Jami’s mother. She also was the secretary in the guidance counselor’s office in the high school. So as I started to date her daughter, Mrs. Gray became a more constant presence in my life.
These, as I said, were turbulent times for me. I wasn’t a bad kid, but I was no saint. And at home, things were far different from how they appeared to an outsider. I had had major issues with my mother from the time I was a little boy. I always seemed to be an annoyance to her simply by being. I was a boy. I made noise. I broke stuff. I made really loud siren sounds when I played with my Matchbox cars. My mother wasn’t much for that, and her methods of dealing with it were far from what I would call ideal.
As I grew, the way she expressed her displeasure for me being me changed from the physical to the verbal. The things my mother said to me are things no mother should ever say to their child, especially one who was wired so strongly to the emotional and sensitive side of the scale.
I look back now, and I realize that huge hole in my life — the lack of a mother whose words were uplifting and supportive — was what drew me to Mrs. Gray. I’m not sure what it was, but Mrs. Gray saw something in me, and she let me know she thought I had potential — if I would just stop being so incredibly goddamn stupid (my words, not hers). I had a propensity to do insanely dumb things to land myself in hot water with any sort of authority figure. Whether it was finding an anti-drug assembly so stupid and unnecessary that I ditched school and drove to the batting cages instead or the nasty things I shot back at my mother, Mrs. Gray was having none of it.
But the way she would correct me was so far different from my birth mother, and so I listened. The number of times I heard Mrs. Gray smoosh up my first and middle name in exasperation to say things like, “JohnMichael, you can’t say that to your mother. I don’t care what she said to you first,” are too many to count.
Jami and I became a constant at a time I needed a constant in my life, and I know without a doubt I wouldn’t have made it through high school without not only her but her brother, her mother and, yes, even her father.
As things got worse in my home, I started to spend more and more time out. At first, that was anywhere but my house. Then, as Mrs. Gray realized I was something kinda good for her daughter, “it “out” became her home. She welcomed me in, fed me, kept tabs on me, made sure I walked the line and, in her way, loved me.
I believe children and teens need routines. Mrs. Gray helped me develop a positive after-school routine. There was no thought in my mind about actually going straight home and dealing with whatever was there. So I would meet Jami after the final bell and follow Lindy home to their house. There, we would sit at their dining room table and do our homework, which Mrs. Gray insisted upon before we did anything else. Then, some combination of me, Jami, Lindy and Lindy’s awesome girlfriend Michelle, would do something. Often, we’d just hang out and watch TV or go outside. Sometimes, Lindy and I would take off and go play pool. For a few months, he and I got it in our heads that it would be a good idea to get some boxing gloves and go in the front yard and punch each other.
And then, there were the times I would come over to Mrs. Gray’s home in tears after the latest incident with my birth mother.
One of the things that drove me nuts as a child and teenager was how different the initial public perception was of my mother from the reality I lived. My mother was sicky-sweet with my friends. And so when I would be down and depressed and my friends would ask me why and I would share the latest situation, very few people actually believed me.
But here’s the thing about masks. They are tough to keep on. And so as Jami and I started getting more serious and she started to spend more time at my home, it became increasingly likely she’d see exactly what I was talking about.
Up until that point, my mother was a point of contention in an otherwise great relationship between Jami and I. Jami was raised by very strict “yes-ma’am, no sir” parents, and when she heard the things I would say back to my mother in the heat of our arguments, she was appalled. She knew that if she were to utter anything in the same ZIP code as the things I was saying, she would be in serious trouble. And she couldn’t fathom that my mom would actually say the things she did.
And then, one night, the mask fell off. I don’t remember exactly what was said. I’ve pushed a lot of that stuff down or away. But I do remember going up to my bedroom because I didn’t want my girlfriend to see my cry. There was a soft knock on the door, and Jami came in and sat down next to me on the floor.
“I am so sorry, John,” she said. “So, so sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”
From then on out, I knew I had a place to turn when these things happened, a place where I would be believed and where I could feel safe.
It wasn’t just Jami. Jami, of course, shared with her mom what she had seen and heard at my home, and so Mrs. Gray began walking the tight rope of supporting me while not pissing off my birth mother. It was a very difficult balancing act, and my own mother hated Mrs. Gray and wasn’t shy about sharing that with me.
It only made me see Mrs. Gray’s good in my life more strongly.
This after-school routine was something safe and dependable and good, and I needed that. Desperately. Again, this isn’t to say Mrs. Gray was easy on me. Far from it. She just read who I was and what would get me and keep me in line better than any adult woman ever had before. And so I started to fall in line.
In doing so, my future became much more clear, and this is where some deep irony sets in. In helping me realize my future needed to continue far, far away from my suburban New York home, Mrs. Gray all but sealed the doom of the relationship I had with her daughter.
As my high school graduation approached, Jami and I talked about the future. I didn’t apply to any college closer to New York than Indiana, and I selected one in Iowa. It was 1,000 miles away, and Jami, Lindy and Mrs. Gray supported me every step of the way. They knew I needed to get away to have any hope of flying.
So when Jami and I talked about the future, there was this sadness, yes, but we were determined to wring every ounce of goodness from who we were as a couple. We put off any decisions on what would happen next until early August, a few weeks before I had to make the 1,000-mile drive to Des Moines.
Eventually, we decided we would stay in touch, remain something, but that we would see other people. A week into college, I met the woman who would go onto be my wife. And though it took a few months of trying to figure out how to navigate the conflict, ultimately, it led me to break up with Jami. I think both of us knew back that August before we said goodbye that that was going to be what happened. It was just a matter of time, and maybe it had happened faster than either of us had thought, but it happened.
Looking back now, more than three decades later, I know I would never have made it to Des Moines if not for Mrs. Gray. I was so close to the edge at some points, and if Jami hadn’t had come into my life when she did, like she did, I wouldn’t be here. So in so many ways, I owe me to Mrs. Gray. The me I’ve been as a husband, as a father, as a man.
People drift. Lindy wasn’t happy with me for breaking up with his sister. I get that. He and I drifted apart. My parents drifted away from New York, moving to South Carolina, and suddenly I had no reason to return to where I grew up. Jami graduated and bumped through her own struggles before finding her way. The last I heard, the entire family — all the people who were so goddamn important to those last two years of my childhood — are living in Florida. I haven’t talked to any of them in years.
But I’ve thought about them all too many times to count. I don’t know how many stories to my children have started with, “When Lindy and I …” A lot, I know that.
I’ve thought about Mrs. Gray a lot more lately. I am the age she was when she was taking care of me. As odd as that is, it’s not lost on me. Over the past four years or so, I’ve taken the deep dive into the past I never wanted to address. I allowed a therapist to pull the stuff out of me that I had stuffed way deep down. He didn’t let me say, “I don’t want to talk about mommy issues in therapy. That’s so cliche.” And so I had to address it.
Perhaps not surprisingly, dealing with it myself — and I was utterly by myself while I did this — and trying to forge a more constructive future with the mother who helped create me led to an inevitable complete break in our relationship, which I now consider to be done and a thing of the past. As I’ve said in other writings, I’m sure she has a different story, and there will likely be some elements of truth to it. But the truth was never what the public saw from the outside.
As I’ve gone through the process of dealing with the past, it has shone a greater spotlight on those who filled the gaps that needed to be filled. Mrs. Gray deserves the biggest spotlight for that. She saved me. And I will never forget that.
Which is why I raise a glass and give three cheers to Mrs. Gray. I am here because of you. I am who I am because you saw something in me before I saw it in myself. And for that, I thank you. Hear hear!