Opinion | My biggest mistake as a mother gave way to my most important lesson

When my son was 8 years old, he told me he was gay. And then I changed his mind.

I was lying on my bed reading. My husband and I had recently separated and my two sons and I were navigating our new reality. Suddenly, I was aware of Spencer standing in the doorway.

“Mom?”

“Yes.”

He flew across the room landing facedown next to me. He buried his large, curly-topped head into the pillow. His body was rigid, his voice muffled.

“I think I’m gay.”

A wave of terror flooded through me. But why? I was an actor. Many of my friends were gay. In the 1980s at the height of the AIDS epidemic, I had helped care for one as he battled unsuccessfully with the disease.

“What makes you think that?” I wondered at the calm in my voice.

“Duncan told me.”

I exhaled. Duncan was his 12-year-old brother.

“Spencer, what color is that laundry basket?”

“Blue,” he sniffled.

“If Duncan called it red, would that make it red?”

“No.”

“So why would him calling you gay make you gay?”

I felt his body relax a bit. And as his body relaxed, so did mine.

To this day I cannot look back on that conversation without pain and deep shame. My beloved little boy had put his trust in me and I didn’t listen. Oh, I heard him all right. But I couldn’t handle it. We don’t have this in our family, I thought, as though “this” was an autoimmune disease. Plus, how would I tell my 80-year-old parents? So instead of staying with him, acknowledging that what he told me was true, I put my fears ahead of his and dismissed his 8-year-old courage. And with this dismissal, I signaled to him that what he told me was not acceptable. I betrayed his trust, leaving him to carry this burden of shame, my shame, for another eight years.

As I write this on Mother’s Day, it strikes me that a few years ago I wouldn’t have thought it important to share my experience. But the pendulum has swung. Today we face an alarming retreat from LGBTQ rights, with hundreds of anti-LGBTQ bills sweeping through state legislatures. Along with it has come a growing animus toward the community that’s often ironically spearheaded by so-called parental rights groups, like Moms for Liberty.

And according to a 2017 study in the Journal of Family Psychology, up to 70% of gay and bisexual youth are met with parents’ disapproval or rejection. Is it any wonder that in 2022, 41% of LGBTQ youth seriously considered suicide?

At 15, Spencer told me again.

We were visiting my parents’ ranch outside Calgary, Alberta. One night after dinner, Spence asked me to go for a walk in a nearby field. The evening sun had painted the countryside gold and the sweet scent of newly cut hay hung in the evening air.

“I love you,” he said.

I looked at him. His face was contorted as he fought back tears. A nauseating dread washed through me. Had he hurt someone? Stolen something? Did he have a drug addiction?

“Mom, I’m gay.”

Then this 6-foot-4-inch athletic honor student collapsed in my arms. His not-yet-mature voice broke through the sobs as he croaked, “I’ll never be able to give you grandchildren.”

When his breathing slowed, I asked him how he knew. He said he didn’t know.

And then — I did it again.

“Maybe you don’t know right now. At your age there’s confusion about all sorts of things.”

I look back on it now and try to make sense of the fear that roiled inside me. Was it the prejudice and danger I knew he might face? Perhaps. But something more selfish was at play. I had plans for this kid. I had envisioned the woman he might marry, the children he would have. I had projected my view of his life onto him and suddenly that construct had come toppling down.

Shortly after we returned home, Spencer took the “out” I had offered him. “Mom, remember what I told you at the ranch? I don’t think I am.”

“Oh, OK,” I said too quickly.

He started to date and had “sort of” girlfriends. He competed in tennis tournaments. He excelled at school. All was well. Denial, in full force, gave me a reprieve.

When he was 16, Spencer went to Paris with his dad. He returned, furious with his father for making homophobic jokes during their trip.

The next day, I was on the phone with my friend Marie. Spencer had loved her since he was 5 and confided in her on a regular basis. I was in mid-diatribe about my ex-husband’s homophobic remarks when she interrupted me.

“Eve — are you listening! This is not about his father. He phoned me yesterday. He is going to tell you.”

“Oh,” I said.

The next day, at a pub near the tennis courts, Spencer, for the third time in his life, said, “Mom, I am gay.”

And yes. At last, I listened. “Oh, are you? That’s OK.”

It would be a sweet ending to suggest that all went smoothly from this point on.

But the following year, after his acceptance to McGill University, I arranged a road trip to Montreal to check the place out. “Invite one of your buddies. It’ll be fun,” I said. A day later, he told me that Eliot was coming. Eliot was gay. And now, these two 17-year-old boys would be sharing a hotel room next to mine? Would I allow his older brother to share with a girl at that age? No! And I told Spencer so.

“Oh, so now you’re homophobic!”

I wanted to bark; don’t you dare play the gay card with me. But I was struck dumb.

I called Marie.

“Look, by September, he will be out of your clutches, doing whatever the hell he wants.”

So, a couple of days later, I found myself checking into a Montreal hotel with the two boys. I told them to meet me at 6 for dinner.

When I got to my room, I poured a beer to relax the growing knot in my stomach. Then a strange thing happened. It was an otherworldly sensation. It felt like someone was lifting a massive weight from my shoulders. I’m not particularly religious, but Christ’s words, “Come unto me all you that are heavy laden, and I will refresh you,” whispered like a soft breeze through my being. And with it came a profound sense of peace.

Later, the boys and I had dinner on an outdoor terrace. The evening was soft and unusually warm for April. Spencer and Eliot and I shared stories and laughter, then wandered the streets looking for the perfect ice cream cone.

We parted on Saint-Catherine Street. The boys were off to grab a coffee and wander around some more. As I watched my son walk off with his friend, a wave of melancholy swept over me. I couldn’t know at the time that our relationship going forward would be an embarrassment of riches: brainstorming our New Year’s resolutions on a whiteboard, sharing his graduation from Columbia, his futile efforts to get me to do a split step in tennis. Most of all, there would be the laughter. But that April evening, my heart ached for the nine lost years of joyous and true connection. Then the tears started to spill, and as they did I felt the sadness wash away. I felt, at last, my heart surrender as it made way for warmth and light. As it made way for love.

If I learned one thing from my nine-year struggle accepting my son’s truth it was to listen to my child. With all my being. If a child says they are gay, believe them. That truth is as real as the color of their eyes. I had to learn to let go of my fears, beliefs, my need for control. In today’s world especially, an LGBTQ child will need all the support and love they can get from the person who means the most in the world to them. But here’s the best part. It feels good to surrender. Because on the other side of that there is love. Don’t waste time. We don’t have that much of it.

This article was originally published on MSNBC.com