I wanted Carol Brady. I wanted a woman who was home and waiting for me and handed out pieces of advice and baked things and never frowned and never drank and accepted everything I did and chose to do, with open arms and no judgment.

But it’s never the same in real life, is it? Life doesn’t have commercials. There’s no time to wait really. You rarely get a chance to get to the fridge for a snack before your life comes back on uninterrupted.

People are flawed. Mothers are flawed. They come in all kinds of temperament and ranges and ideas and morals and all from a place that they’ve already learned, probably from their mothers. Things that are handed down get handed down again whether we like it or not.

I was a handful. I had a lot going on. Sometimes she was there, and sometimes she wasn’t. Sometimes I ran. Sometimes she ran. Sometimes there was a war on, and sometimes there was peace. Or a truce. We battled for first place and we ended up in a tie.

As much as I resisted her and tried to steer myself away from becoming her, it was really too late. The things that drove me nuts about her I inevitably inherited and have put into play in my own life. I know this every time I walk into a theatre and want to spend the first rehearsal dusting.

Just today, I took every book off of Y’s shelf, wiped them off one by one, put them back according to size and cleaned off the back and sides of the bookcase. He didn’t ask me to do this, I felt compelled. My mother’s voice ringing in my ears the whole time.

She survived my drug addiction, even when I went to visit her in a heroin filled haze and almost passed out at the kitchen table.

For every amazing thing she did, there were equally not so amazing things as well. Things it took me years to forgive her for. I’m sure she could say the same thing about me. It’s not about what she did or what she didn’t do. It’s also not about what I did, and what I didn’t do. The fact that this middle class woman who only wanted to get married and have kids and retire somewhere comfortable survived an ex prostitute, recovering junkie Transsexual living with AIDS who eventually married a woman, was a feat in and of itself. Because she survived it. It took her some time, but she survived it. And eventually, we ended up becoming best friends, going out together, laughing (a lot), swapping clothes, holding hands, and talking every single Sunday afternoon on the phone long distance.

She was to re marry my father after being separated for almost 20 years, but passed away very suddenly on their pre honeymoon trip. Luckily, and as with our whole ironic relationship, the last thing we said to each other on the phone was I love you.

Thank God. Thank God we said that to each other.

Perhaps Mrs. Brady might have handled my life with kit gloves. Maybe she would have smiled and looked at what I was doing to myself and went immediately into the kitchen and baked. Maybe she would have. But I believe, and I truly believe this, that had my mother done that, I wouldn’t have learned what I’ve learned. I also wouldn’t have been as proud of my own mother as I was through most of my adult life.

“I’m too old to change.” She would say to me, “This is the way I am.”

And yet, we went from secretive meetings so the neighbor’s wouldn’t see, to going to The Ritz and celebrating her birthday with the entire family. My life is huge, and I don’t know that Mrs. Brady had the cojones to handle it. But Mimi did.

I miss her every single day of my life. Happy Mother’s Day, Mimi. I’m doing exactly what you told me. I’m living my life happily ever after.