Mom (16 page)

Jackie Miller:
You are one of the finest human beings I know. I love being around you. I’ve seen you become such a bold, brave individual. That’s something I always wanted for myself. And when I’m looking at my life now, I think,
Go for it, Jackie. Go for it!
So I guess you learn from your kids.

Someone told me just this week: “If you see Scott in the elevator, I don’t care what kind of a day you’re having, you feel happier.” When I hear people say stuff like that, I’m thinking,
I hope I had a part to play in that
. But I don’t know how much credit your father and I can really take. I’d like to say you’re so perfect because of all my efforts. [
laughs
] But I realize that you’re your own unique self that nobody can really take credit for.

Scott Miller:
I always grew up knowing that I was adopted, but I’ve never really understood what went into it—I guess probably because we never talked much about it. So when did you and Dad decide to adopt?

Jackie:
We always knew from the time we first married—we’re very methodical people. Our plan was: we’re gonna get married, and two years later we’re gonna have a child, and then we’re going to adopt a child. Well, the two years go by, and we didn’t have a biological child.
Okay, let’s do the adoption thing.
And that’s what we did.

For all the wonderful things I said about you before, you were truly a handful. I mean, you took all that we had. We had no time for anything else or anybody else—we really didn’t. No energy. So we couldn’t even consider, could not even
consider
a biological child after that.You were it, and we knew it.

Now, this is something you really don’t know, and I don’t know how you’re gonna react to this. When I was seventeen years old, I got pregnant. The light of my life is my father, but he gave me twenty-four hours to leave town. I did have a son, at seventeen, but you don’t have many resources, and I was not able to keep this child. I gave this little baby up for adoption, and I said,
I don’t know how to make this right, but I will adopt a child when I’m able to take care of a child.
And that’s what I did.

I always was going to tell you at some point—I just didn’t know when. I know children tend to put their parents on pedestals, but I think I handled the situation as best I could. I wish it had never happened, but it did. . . .

Scott:
. . . Wow.

Jackie:
I know, I know. The thing is that there’s not much we haven’t talked about over the years. We love our talky sessions. So many times it would seem,
Gosh, is this the time to tell him
? But I’m seventy-three now. I don’t know anybody else who’s going to tell you, and I think you should know. It just seems like such a big secret, and I don’t like having that out there.

Scott:
Thank you for telling me. I just wasn’t ready for that. [
laughs
] I just didn’t know. And I love you for telling me. I can’t believe that you’ve walked around for so many years with that—it had to be hard for you.

Jackie:
The hardest part for me was that you bring a life into the world, and you really don’t know anything about what happened. But I always thought about him.

Scott:
Wow . . . Speaking of secrets, I remember when I came out to you. We met for dinner in Harlem. I remember still not really knowing how you were going to react and being scared, thinking,
Okay, here we go!
I remember saying to you, “Hey, Mom, I want to talk to you about something.” And you took your glasses off, and you put them on the table. You buckled your fingers and looked at me—almost through me. I remember thinking,
Oh my God, this is awful!
I stumbled just telling you I was gay. And you looked away. Then the first thing out of your mouth was “I love you, and I’m your mother.” I just remember everything kind of melting away.

Jackie:
By that time, I knew—it wasn’t even a question in my mind. Just as you were this wonderful little kid with all the curiosity, you were gay—that was as much a part of you as any of the other things. It’s just you. It was certainly never a choice you had.

Your gayness has brought such dimension to my life. I’m just on the fringes of it, but I see such a community of care and concern and love and closeness—I guess because you have to band together. I don’t think I would’ve known of that or been exposed to that had it not been for your being gay. It’s been a richness beyond measure. It’s wonderful. There’s no downside for me at all.

Scott:
Are there any big disappointments in me?

Jackie:
Well, you know, if I could’ve made you any different, you would’ve been toilet trained a lot sooner. [
laughs
] I’m sorry, Scott, but that was awful! That went on forever. . . . Honestly, I’d have to think hard to come up with something else.

Scott:
It’s kind of funny. I think of myself as an emotional person about lots of things—like at the drop of a hat I can start crying at a movie or something like that—but for some reason, where you’re concerned, I try not to be very emotional. I worry sometimes that you’ll never know just how deeply I love you. And sometimes it’s scary for me to imagine life without you.

Jackie:
You don’t let me get away with stuff—I always know that you are watching with a critical eye. But it’s good that you don’t let me be lazy—you don’t let me give you easy answers for when I don’t go to the gym. At some point, the tables turned, and now you sort of watch over and instruct me, and that’s okay.

Scott:
It’s so funny, I don’t tell you this, but I have conversations with friends about you and Dad all the time—little things that I notice, changes in you. And it’s like I want to deny the fact that time is passing on. On some level I think that if I push you or if I make you work harder at things, then it’ll make you stronger and you won’t be able to just drift into whatever long good-night it is that people talk about—it’ll be something that has to claim you. And I guess I see it as my way of making sure you’re around. . . . I don’t know what life will be like. It really scares me.

Jackie:
That’s something I can’t make better for you. You’re a strong guy; you’ve got all kinds of resources. I don’t doubt it’ll be tough, but you’ll be okay. No question—you’ll be just fine. You always have been. You and I haven’t missed much. We spend a lot of time together, we really do. I treasure it—and you’ll have those memories.

Scott:
I love you.

Jackie:
I love you, too. You’re my life.

Yvette Saliba:
How did you meet Mom?

Sy Saliba:
We met in Trinidad when she was twelve years old. I was fifteen. There was a flood, and several of us from different churches went together to help people who were in distress—help them clean their houses and salvage things. I saw this cute thing, and I said to myself,
She’s nice.
I just kind of watched her from a distance, because I was always a very shy person.

We kind of knew each other on and off, and we didn’t date for a long time. We really started to see each other seriously in the States just after I finished my sophomore year in college. So I was twenty-three then, and she was twenty.

Yvette:
Do you remember your first date with her?
Sy:
Yes—I didn’t know what to do with her, so I just invited her to go to the zoo. She was very gracious. She said, “Okay.” But then, once we got in the car, she kind of gently said, “Do we really have to go to the zoo?” [
laughs
] So we never went to the zoo. We just drove around and talked, and then I took her back home. On the way—it was probably about eight o’clock—she said, “Oh, my word, I’m hungry.” And then I realized I never offered to take her to eat or anything! I was really a clumsy clod in those days.

When I first said, “I love you,” she asked, “Why?” I said, “I like your legs, and I like your hair, and I like your eyes.” She looked at me and said, “Are you buying a car?” It was kind of like,
Go take a hike,
you know? I kind of learned later about all those things that women like.

We managed to muddle our way through. We got married in ’68, in Kalamazoo, Michigan—I was twenty-six and she was twenty-three. By then we were both students at Andrews University. I had just finished my bachelor’s degree, and she was working on hers, and we were poor as church mice. When we celebrated our anniversary of our first month, I took her to Schuler’s Steak House, which was kind of like the ultimate eating place in Saint Joseph, Michigan. We spent all of twelve dollars. That was our entire month’s grocery bill in those days—spent it all on that evening. She fretted with me on the way home how wanton and extravagant we were to do that. Guilt was a dominant theme in her life. [
laughs
] But she also really enjoyed life, so she oscillated between guilt and a joy of life, which was kind of interesting.

But you knew her, too, so what did you like about her?

Yvette:
I think what I liked was her insatiable appetite for humor, that she always tried to find things that were funny in everything. She had a kind of audacious spirit about her. I remember as a little girl, we were driving back from Canada and you stopped at a gas station. A man told you that you needed to pay first, and then he took off with your money.You got back in the car, and Mom said, “What’s wrong?” You said, “The man took my money!” She rolled down the window and leaned out and started to shout, “Thief, thief, thief!” [
laughs
] She was just kind of bold.

And then just how much you both would like to talk. I remember William and I talking one time about how when we would go to sleep, we would hear you guys just talking—about work, about different people in the neighborhood, and that sort of thing. Just talking
endlessly
.

Sy:
Yeah, we enjoyed each other. The conversations never seemed to end. It’s amazing, over the years, we never even felt like two different people, even though we were. It was like our spirits merged and we were soul mates. We just became one.

She became sick in 1997, when we were here in Orlando. The metaphor that I keep thinking of and still keep thinking of is that we were two canoes on a stream. And then there was a split, a fork in the stream. She took one stream and I took the other. And for a long time, we would paddle together. We could hold hands, even though we were in different canoes and we were set on a different course. And then gradually the streams kind of moved away, and we could no longer hold hands but we could look at each other, talk to each other. Then it got further and further away, until we just lost each other. That still stays with me to this day.

Yvette:
I know as a daughter watching her go through that, she seemed to maintain a sense of optimism. Was that something she put on for her children?

Sy:
No, it was who she was. As she said, she’d find her little oases—little things that she could look forward to, little trips or occasions that she could plan to get through the bone marrow transplant or the pain of a biopsy.

The thing I remember most about the final stages of her illness, which was very painful for me, was her strong desire to be remembered. She took all the slides that we’d shot over the years of our lives with you children, and she made a DVD with photos of each of us. She spent hours doing this. It was her way of trying to make sure that we don’t ever forget her, that we remember her for who she was, what she did, and how she shaped our lives. That was a very painful thing—to see her struggle for memory.

But it was a great journey. You know, we didn’t plan on you. Pat was just beginning a program in a master’s of fine arts, because she loved to paint and she loved to sculpt. She had done a few courses and was really enthusiastic about getting back into life after having raised the boys. And then all of a sudden in the spring of 1978, she started to feel chilly. She couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Then she heard the news that she was pregnant, and she was really angry with me. I was like, “Honey, why are you angry at me? Angry is out of proportion. What did I do? I had a small part to play in this.” [
laughs
]

And then you were born. She dropped out of the master’s program. She painted on her own, and she never took it back up. But in a sense, she sculpted her life in you. That was better than any stone or marble sculpture, because you are her handiwork.

I’ll never forget her. Because whenever I look at you, I’ll remember your mother.