I had time with my mother, but I really lived with my father. One time he gave all his salary so I could travel to a training camp. He couldn't pay the rent, but he did that.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My own mother, my sister and nearly all the women in my family had full-time jobs as mothers. They were wonderful at it. They drove their children back and forth to soccer, skating lessons, piano lessons, private schools, but I sensed, even in my own mother, a kind of distant dissatisfaction.
When I spent time with my father, it wasn't playing ball in the back yard. I came to his office and listened to him do business or sat in on meetings. I walked job sites. On Saturday, we'd see my grandfather in Queens for a couple hours, and then he'd say, 'Let's go collect rent!'
My mom lived with me until I started making enough money to support myself. I was asking her to leave the entire time. I'd been ready to move out since I was, like, 14.
My mom had a job, and she also took care of us, and she also took care of Dad - I always saw her pulling triple duty, doing more than I ever felt like she needed to. I made a promise to myself that it would be more of a team effort in my family someday. And because of that, I became more independent.
Even when my parents were together, they both had to travel and work, and it wasn't like they had nine-to-five jobs. In that way, it wasn't a normal family life. We'd go and stay for a few weeks with Dad on tour and bring a tutor with us.
My mother and father had so many ups and downs and stayed with each other and helped each other. My mother took in ironing and she was a waitress. My father was working in the factory and he did people's tax returns.
My mother stopped working when she had my brother. She was a full time mom until I started getting heavily into ice skating lessons, and it got to the point where they really needed my mom to earn an income.
I spent pretty much every minute of my life with my mom.
My parents, who were split up, were so good at keeping my environment strong and keeping everything around me not focused on the fact that we were poor. They got me culture. They took me to museums. They showed art to me. They read to me. And my mother drove two hours a day to take me to University Elementary School.
We were so poor that my mother would often leave me in a foster home until she could raise enough money to rent rooms for us.