Mother Always Knows

Originally published: May 12, 1996

By Todd Camp

There are many amazing abilities in the superpower arsenal of the typical American mom.

These are familiar skills to most children, particularly those of the naughtier variety. They include things like: omnipotent knowledge, which allows her to see any forbidden transgression occurring in the house even while vacuuming out the back of the hall closet; catlike hearing, in order to catch the slightest click of a lock tumbler when you're sneaking in past curfew; and the X-ray fib vision, which enables her to see through the most elaborate lie like a freshly squeegeed windshield.

It was my mom's adept talent at this last skill that elevated her to the higher matriarchal level of supermom, because no one could penetrate a fabrication like her. As an adult, I've learned that my mother can rattle off every lie I've ever told with encyclopedic efficiency. This rote recitation seems to escape her, however, when trying to remember the title of the movie she and Dad rented last week, "You know, it was the one with that guy?"

My mom even knew I was lying to her before I knew I was lying to her, which is why her reaction to my shocking revelation of being gay was, well, less than shocking.

That's not saying she wasn't surprised. I mean, I did work up the nerve to actually tell her . . . over the phone . . . over five different conversations in a three-hour period . . . after waiting 26 years, but I did it. Eventually.

Our conversation went something like this:

"Mom, I've been asking myself a lot of questions lately. I don't know what I want. Everything has gotten so complicated these days and it's left me feeling very con-. . . "

"You're gay, right?"

"Uh, yes."

"I knew it!"

Well, it was actually a little more complicated than that, but you get the general idea. When I asked her how she knew, she scoffed it off as mother's intuition.

But I suspect that it wasn't the same intuition that told her when that decimated lamp wasn't knocked over by one of the cats or when the slightly dented fender wasn't really damaged while the car sat parked at the mall. It was a deeper power. The kind that told her when a cookie might stop the flow of tears, when a bruised ego needed massaging and when someone she loved was in pain.

Sons have intuition, too, you know. And mine told me that mom wasn't as okey-dokey with the whole thing as she'd lead me to believe. I didn't expect her to begin ripping her hair out in clumps or to start making hysterical guest appearances on the "I can't believe my son's a pervert!" episode of the Ricki Lake Show. But I also didn't anticipate her leading a battalion of proud parents at the annual gay pride parade.

What she did do was tell me she loved me more than anything in the world and that my happiness was of utmost importance. But I learned later that she had had her moments of heavy tears, self-blame and needless worrying.

Did this vulnerable side of her lower my expectations of the supermom I'd come to love and respect? Nah, even supermoms get their capes stuck in phone-booth doors every now and then.