In Search Of A Mother's Love

In Search Of A Mother's Love Jerome A. Giters, Sr.

The ConTextos Authors Circle was developed in collaboration with young people who are at risk of, victims of or perpetrators of violence in El Salvador. In 2017, this innovative program expanded into Chicago to create tangible, high-quality opportunities that nourish the minds, expand the voices and share the personal truths of individuals who have long been underserved and underestimated. Through the process of drafting, revising and publishing memoirs, participants develop self-reflection, critical thinking, camaraderie and positive selfprojection to author new life narratives.

Since January 2017, ConTextos has collaborated with the Cook County Sheriff's Office to implement Authors Circle in Division X of Cook County Department of Corrections as part of a vision for reform that recognizes the value of mental health, rehabilitation and reflection.

These powerful memoirs complicate the narrative about violence and peace-building, and help author a hopeful future for these men, their families, and our collective communities.

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In Search Of A Mother's Love Jerome A. Giters, Sr.

When I was a baby, 9 months old, my mother gave me to my grandmother, and went and

joined the Army.

When I was younger, I didn’t know the reason of her giving me away.

But, as I got older, people started to talk about why she was in the Army and why she gave me to my granny. Some things I believed, and others I didn’t want to believe. But one thing that I wouldn’t let go that they said was that my mother loved me, even though I didn’t feel like it. I still kept the hope in my heart.

But, I would be telling a lie if I said that the whole situation didn’t make me feel some type of way. I felt sad, neglected, angry, and abandoned. I can remember one particular situation when I let my anger and disappointment show in front of the rest of my family.

See, I had this issue with my mother where she would do everything for my cousins as she would do for me. Now, I wasn’t mad about her doing things for them.

more for me, you know, I wasn’t selfish at all. But, it was just that I felt she should have done bring or do something special for me, ’cause I'm her only child.

Now I can't say that my aunts didn’t do things for me, ’cause one of them sacrificed so much for me, and I love my Aunt Linda for this. But, it was times when they showed their children a little extra attention or extra love, motherly love. That’s what I was expecting from my mom, but I never got it and that made me sad.

This one particular time when she came to visit, she brought us a lot of gifts, mostly me and my other boy cousin. So as she is laying out our gifts and I see that I have nothing extra, I started acting up, saying things like, “I don't even want this stuff!” What I really felt was...

Why he have to have the same things as me? Where are my extra things? That was my momma, not his!

But everybody was looking at me like I was bogus for doing my mother like that, after she just spent all that money on me. But they’ll never understand my issues, ’cause they had their mothers right there with them all the time.

They really had time to kick it with their mothers by themselves anytime they felt like it, ’cause they were around them all the time. But when mine came to visit, there was never any me-and-her time. I never had any time to kick it one on one with her, to get to know her or for her to get to know me, because she was in town for a week, maybe two, and then she was gone again until the next major holiday or what have you.

So that really saddened me.

So that year, she bought us some leather coats, and I was filled with so much anger that I said I didn’t want the coat. Everybody was like, “Boy, take that coat and quit acting silly.” I grabbed the coat, and stepped on one end with my foot and pulled the other end until it ripped almost in half.

Then I left it in the middle of the floor and walked out with my heart heavy.

Feeling as if it weighed a ton, leaving the coat like our relationship was, torn and abandoned.

Now that I think about it, what really hurt was that no one asked me why.

Why was I acting the way I was towards my mother? If they would’ve asked, I would have replied that none of those “things” mattered. I just wanted a relationship with my mother, because the one we had was nonexistent.

passed away, things in my life But as I got older, things didn’t change. In fact, after my grandmother h to come get me. only seemed to get worse, but my mother still never cared enoug

disrupting the class and other I started acting up in school. I was getting okay grades, but I was g drugs and doing whatever students. And I started running the streets, doing bad shit, slangin else I wanted to do.

my mother all d out that I could have been living with But what really hurt was when I foun me behind, and I asked my people why my mother left this time, wherever she was stationed. me to live with my grandmother because she wanted at first the talk was that she left me with the Army and ed coming out, about why she really join my grandmother. Then the truth started gave me to my grandma.

They said it was because she was running, trying to get away from my father (whom I’ve never met). They said the reason she never came to get me when my grandma passed was because I looked too much like my father, and reminded her too much of him and the things in their past.

Those things, the talking, all happened after my grandmother died.

Man, how I wish she was still alive, because I had so many questions without any answers.

I think the biggest let-down from my mother came when I was 19 years old and I was accused of first-degree murder. During the time, the police were looking for me for first-degree murder. I wasn’t scared, but my mother's feelings and point of view was the total opposite of mine. See, I wasn’t trying to go to jail, so I was running from the police.

But she was very scared for me, upset, and, by having no control of the situation, helpless (so I thought). She wanted me to turn myself in, but one of my homies, Spoke, told me to run until I got the bond money up, before I turned myself in. But my mother stressing over me being on the run overruled my friend’s request to run.

At first I wasn’t trying to hear my mom, because I didn’t want to go to jail. But even though she treated me like shit, I still didn’t have the power to deny my mother. To get me to do it for sure, she promised to bond me out of jail, and do everything in her power to help me get out of jail, if I turned myself in to the police. That's where the disappointment came into play, because once I turned myself in, I sat in jail the whole time, until I copped out to a lesser plea.

She left me in jail, and so all the time I sat in Cook County Jail, I built up so much resentment towards her ’cause she didn’t keep her promise to me. Then add to that the years of neg lect I had received from her over my young life. It all had her really not being one of my favorite peo ple in the world. But as odd as it felt, I still loved her.

To this day, I can’t explain why I still felt love for a mother who is supposed to always have my back, good or bad, right or wrong, but instead let me down and left me behind, like, “Fuck you (again),” as if my life meant nothing. For me to still be craving her attention, her praises, and her love made me sometimes feel like I betrayed myself.

I had real mixed feelings about her, but the straw that broke the camel's back for me happened in 1999, when my daughter Jalliyah was born. My mother came to Chicago to visit, so I decided to take my girls, Jareka and Jalliyah, to meet their grandmother for the first time. Jareka was 4 years old and Jalliyah was like 4 of 5 months old. So when we made it to my aunt’s house, where my mother was staying while she visited, I was so happy that my babies were finally meeting their grandma.

So I’m sitting back, letting them interact with each other, praying that my children change me and my mother's relationship. And why not! They were so adorable; Jareka is very smart, talkative, and observant, with such an explosive personality that you can’t do nothing but love her, and Jaliyah was so cute, with dimples and thick pretty hair. So I just knew my mother was going to love my family. But it broke my heart, what happened next.

See, my cousin was having a baby, so there was tons of baby stuff laying around, baby swings, car seats, baby walkers, toys, etc. So by my daughter seeing all those baby things, and knowing that she just had a new baby sister and that their grandm other was up here visiting, she automatically thought the baby things were for her sister. So she started asking questions about the toys and stuff laying around. She asked, “Grandma, is this my sister’s?” putting her hands on one of the boxes.

And my mother just sat there and said nothing. I was sitting there so hurt that she didn’t even answer my baby girl.

So I stepped in, with my heart crushed, telling my daughter that no, they weren't her sister’s stuff.

Then she went to the next one and the same thing happened. I was broken. She was just a kid, so she didn’t see or feel the disrespect of my mother not answering, but I did. It took everything in me not to react or to let my emotions spill from my eyes. So I told Reek to get her and her sister’s coat.

She asked, “Dad, are we about to go?” I replied, “Yes,” and got my girls together and we got out of there.

There was no goodbyes or anything on my mother’s end. When we got in the car, I strapped my girls in their car seats and I pulled away. I just couldn’t keep my hurt in anymore, so I cried right there while driving back home. I made sure my daughters didn’t see Daddy crying.

out, leaving the was out there in front of the house. So I got When I pulled up in front of our house, my BM nothing, that t happened, and she tried telling me it wasn’t girls in the car, to talk to my BM. I told her wha long, that we this been taking care of our kids ourselves for everything was going to be okay. That we have spect I saw, because she wasn’t there to witness the disre me, like it ng feeli n’t was she But her. need didn’t and it wasn’t her mother who done it.

My mother had already shitted on me, but I refused to let her shit on my children. So I told my BM that I had to go back over there and tell her about herself. So she took the kids inside the house, and I went back over to my aunt’s house to have a one-on-one with my mother. When I knocked on the door and said my name, I heard someone say, “Aw shit.” So when I came in, everyone thought I was going to lose it, but I didn’t.

I asked my momma to come to the back so we could talk. She first looked like she didn’t want to, but finally got up and came. I told her that I didn't care about how me and her relationship was or how she treated me, but I would not allow or accept her to treat my children the way she treated me. That my children will not be victims of her neglect.

After that incident, we didn’t talk, because I felt she had hurt me for the last time. I was so fucked up by the whole ordeal that sometimes I would imagine that she passed away when I was younger. That way, in my mind, eyes, and heart, I didn’t have to feel the abandonment, the let-down, or the sadness of being not wanted by someone who was supposed to love me wholeheartedly for life.

There are so many things running through my heart and mind about the way my mother made me feel coming up. All these years of how my younger self hurts still feels so trapped in my older self. I think that feeling comes from the many questions I have for her, that to this day are still unanswered. I’m still everywhere emotionally with this situation, and there are answers only she can give me that can close a lot of chapters in my life’s book.

So to this day, my mind, heart, and soul is still wondering, Why? Why disown me?

Because of my mom, I don’t think I’ve even had a true and honest relationship with a woman.

Because of her, I have a hard time trusting women, but I’m trying to work on that. I’m taking it one day at a time, and starting it off by trying to forgive her. Hopefully by doing this, God will allow me a chance to be in a real relationship with the woman in my life (she knows who she is!), without holding back and running when our relationship starts to get real. God help me.

behind, as if I wasn’t her son, as if Why or how was she able to move on with her life and leave me e of my life? But I wonder, Do I didn’t exist, and to do as if her actions wouldn’t affect the outcom said to me when I was 24 or 25, she know what I really thought about every day? Something she of my life. But do she know what she told me that I would end up just like my dad, in jail for the rest really hurt about that?

She did nothing to try and stop it. But what’s even crazier than anything is, even with the things that did or didn’t go down between us (a mother-and-son relationship), the longing for more between us is still there, and to this day, I’m lowkey still yearning for her Comfort , her Understanding, and her Love. A Mother’s Love!

Jerome A. Giters, Sr. I’m from a place where only the strong survive, where most people really don't have a choice but to be strong, or front as if they are that way, or get eaten alive. I’m from a place where the police never cared if we lived or died. I’m from a place where people would die for respect they haven’t even earned (in the way). I’m from the Westside of Chicago, where we’re known for chasing a bag (that money). I’m from a place where hustling means selling nickel and sawbuck rocks, to pushing loose squares and icy cups on the block. A place where if you put down your C or D pack, you might get jacked and have to put that money back. I’m from a place where we all slept together to keep warm, and stuck together as a whole so we won.

I’m from a place where a lot of the time, we downplayed who we was just to fit in. I’m from buttermilk and sweet cornbread. I’m from where my whole family lived under one roof to everybody moving around, living loose. I’m from a place of Cubs games on TV as a shorty, eating watermelon on the front porch in the summer. I’m from a place where when the police pulled you over and ran your name, and if nothing came back, they fingerprinted you anyway.

I’m from a place where I was taught to put God first, and to keep yo head up even when it hurts. I’m from a place where we chase love, to make ourselves feel better. From a place of unspoken love, a place where on the outside looking in, you just knew it was there. Man, I’m off California, where we known for keeping a pole and stay chasing a roll.

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