Walter Mosley - Triumph of Love

 

 

 Hello. It's so amazing to be here. It's great to be with all these people and also be, like, in one of the most storied places in New York. I mean, Sojourner Truth spoke here-- "Ain't I a Woman?" I mean, Abraham Lincoln spoke here. Frederick Douglass. It's amazing. But now it's my turn to tell you a story. I'm an only child, and-- [applause] well, thank you. And my mother was an only child. She was born in the Bronx, of Eastern European Jewish émigrés who came at the beginning of the 20th century. My father was an orphan. His mother died when he was seven years old. And at the age of eight, a year later, his father, Walter Mosley, who I'm named for, went to go logging and never came back.

 

Maybe he ran away, maybe he died. A lot of people died doing that kind of work, and Louisiana people didn't-- if they didn't know who you were, they didn't tell you. And so, my father hit the road at the age of 8, looking for family, because he was bereft of familial warmth. And he traveled around Louisiana, didn't find anything. Went to Texas, found some things, but not really. He kind of grew up and went off to World War II. And in World War II, with other young black men from the South, he was in the biggest war in the history of the world. He came back to Fifth Ward, Houston, Texas, and realized that everybody he knew there had died, either violently, from disease, or some other kind of neglect.

 

He was safer in the largest war in the history of the world than he was in his hometown. And so, he decided to leave, and he came to Los Angeles. In Los Angeles, he met my mother. They became allies, they got married, they produced me. And the thing about them is that my parents were a little odd. The way that they loved was odd. My mother could only really concentrate on one person at a time in her life, and that was my father. And she couldn't really express physical or emotional love. She found it almost impossible to do. My father, who never really got beyond being that 8-year-old boy, needed a great deal of attention. And so, most of her physical and emotional attention was on my father. My father loved me passionately-- I'd go so far as to say inordinately.

 

He did the things my mother didn't do. He hugged me and kissed me and he told me he loved me. And he would tickle me at night when I went to bed. But he also infantilized me through my whole adolescence and he beat me. He really beat me. And it was weird because I needed my father because I wasn't getting anything from my mother. But he would beat me and tell me I wasn't capable of doing anything. And at some point, or another, I went to my mother and I said, "You know, Dad beats me. This is really awful." And my mother, who I know witnessed these things, said, "No, he didn't." I said, "Well, Mom, he did." She said, "No, you're exaggerating. He didn't do that."

 

And so then I would get upset, and I'm talking to my mother-- "You never hugged me or kissed me or told me you loved me." I expected her to deny that too, but instead she said, "My mother never did that for me, but I knew that she loved me." So, at the age of 18, almost 19, I left California. I went to Vermont. And I've been on the East Coast ever since. I would go home and visit every once in a while, but I needed to be away from my parents because it would drive me crazy to be around them. And I lived there, and I talked to my parents. I really love my parents, but it was difficult. 1993, my father dies.

 

This is really one of the worst things that ever happened in my life, and certainly the worst thing that happened to my mother. And it was a terrible event. And so, for a few days there-- my mother was older and I would call her up and talk to her every morning before she went to work. And one morning I called her, and she answers the phone, and I said, "Hey, Mom, how are you?" And she goes, "Oh, okay." And I said, "You sure you're all right?" She goes, "Yeah. Let me ask you something, though, Walter." I said, "What, Mom?" She goes, "Did Dad die?" And I said, "Yeah, Mom. He died a month ago. We buried him." She goes, "But he died. He's dead." And I went, "Yeah."

 

She said, "Because, you know, I woke up this morning and he wasn't in bed next to me. And I walked around the house, I'm looking for him. He's not here. And there are all these letters on the kitchen table that are giving their condolences, that are saying that he's dead. Is he dead?" And I said, "Yeah. Yeah, Mom, he's dead." She never really got it in that conversation, but as time went on, she began to understand that my father was dead. And this was a turn in our relationship. We were talking more, and she could pay some more attention to me. She still didn't hug me or kiss me or tell me she loved me, but she talked to me. And I would, you know, call her and do things.

 

And for the next 12 years that went along-- I remember once my girlfriend and I went out and visited her, and my mother took my girlfriend out for lunch. And at lunch she told her, she said, "I've always loved Walter. He's so wonderful. I always thought he was-- he's so brilliant. I would, even when he was a little kid, I would just sit and listen to him and I would be enthralled by how wonderful he was, how intelligent he was." She never said this to me. Never. She told my girlfriend. My girlfriend came home and she told me. My mother would never say it. Twelve years go by, and my mother starts to enter dementia. She starts to lose control, and her ability to think starts to flow away. The language center of her brain-- she's a very brilliant woman--

 

So it was a sad thing. Her language center is failing and she's starting to make bad decisions. She had a stack of $100 bills about this thick, and she would say, "I'm going to the market to buy some potatoes," with her stack of $100 bills. I said, "Mom, you can't do that. Wait-- we're going to figure out how to get you some potatoes." And so, I had to start talking to her two, three times a day. She called me up-- "How do I use the remote on the television?"-- and whatever it was, I would talk to her. We got along really well. And at the end of every conversation, I'd say, "Mom, I love you." And she'd go, "Oh, yes, well, thank you," or "Oh, nice. Well, goodbye," or "Mmm, yeah. Mm." Now, that went on for about three months.

 

"Mom, you push the red button on the top of the remote control." "I love you." "Huh. Thank you. Thank you. The television's on now." And we get off the phone. And then after three months, I was talking to her, and I said, "So, Mom, you know I love you." And she goes, "Thank you. [stammers] I love you too." And this for me was the greatest triumph of love I have experienced in my life up until this day today-- to get to the place where I could be a part of obtaining the love that my mother always had for me, but could never come out. And that's my shout to the heart. Thank you.