Colin Fleming: I've had three mothers, and they all mattered

Chicago Tribune

11-05-2025

What makes a mother a mother? I'm someone who's had three. You might ask, 'Wait, how does this guy have three mothers?' But I did, and they were all important, although only one of them was truly my mom.
All of the best love has a maternal component. The love between friends, brothers, and a human and nature. It's our everything component when we are at our best as people.
My biological mother conceived me, at the age of 15, in New Bedford, Massachusetts, not far from where Herman Melville lit out to sea. My biological father was older and married with a family of his own, and thus a man up to considerable no good.
Mother No. 1 was then shipped off to Cape Cod, presumably to avoid the gossip of townsfolk, and it was there that I was born. We came back to New Bedford separately, because she had given me up for adoption, sending me into the world with the gift of life and a Winnie-the-Pooh stuffed animal, which I still have.
I don't know if she's still out there, though she should still have a lot of years in front of her. I hope so. Just as I hope she's happy.
I've never had a need to meet her. We were told that she was highly musical, but it was enough that she showed me a form of real love. A love to have me and to give me what I believe she viewed — no matter how scared she was — as a better chance.
Then I came to reside with mother No. 2, a foster mom who bestowed upon me the temporary name of Marshall, given that she was a big 'Gunsmoke' fan (as I later came to be), and it was with her that I spent my first Christmas, before my parents — my real parents — adopted me.
People tend not to understand adoption. I get questions such as, 'Did you ever meet your real mother?'
My real mother is the woman in Illinois who encouraged me to be myself, this boy who loved hockey and William Shakespeare, baseball and the Beatles, playing football with his buddies and wandering alone for hours in the forest trying to identify birdsong and finding shed snakeskin.
That encouragement is one of the greatest gifts we can give someone else. It's beyond money, beyond blood.
When we provide it for someone who is our child, we're parenting not just with unconditional love, but also foundational grace. It's how we help give people to themselves.
Eventually my parents adopted two twin girls whose biological mother later took back. My mother was devastated, and I was terrified that someone would come for me, with nightmares that I'd be snatched away.
But my mother helped make me feel safe again, despite her own pain. She wasn't just my mom; she was my reading buddy, the person I could talk to about anything in the world, who wanted to hear it because it came from my burgeoning self.
My mother and I don't really have anything in common, but we've always had a rapport. And that's big in this life, rapport. A rapport with people one cares about, the world, wonder, yourself.
She lost my father when he was only 53, and another girl they had adopted — my sister — who died of an overdose at 33. My mother soldiered on.
She was there for me and continues to be. She is there for my other sister, who is her biological child, and she's there for my sister's three children, as the best Grammie going.
My mother is an exemplar, and she has always been a reminder to me that love is not just something that happens. It's active and perpetually put into practice.
She shared a poem that she'd found with me when I was young, the same way I'd share the stories I wrote with her. It sat in a little frame on my bureau.
The poem concluded with the line, 'You weren't born under my heart, but in it,' and not a day has passed that I have not thought of it.
My mom taught me the real meaning of being a mom, and that was relevant for me, too, in the standards I have for myself, the decency and grace with which I strive to live my life, no matter how hard anything gets.
Thank you, Mom, for finding me and holding me in your heart and helping me better understand what a mother could be.
Colin Fleming is the author of 'Sam Cooke: Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963,' an entry in Bloomsbury's 33 1/3 series.