by HEATHER O'NEILL Heather O’Neill is the author of several books, including Lullabies for Little Criminals, The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, Daydreams of Angels, and The Lonely Hearts Hotel. She was recently awarded the Writers’ Trust Fellowship.
When I was seven years old my mother decided to send me to live with my neglectful and unemployed father in Montreal. Not because they believed I would be happier, but because they wanted to be free from the burden of raising me. I remember feeling like I was being raised in the wrong home and in the wrong city and I missed my mother all the time.
I hadn’t seen them for a couple years when they sent me a letter saying they would come take me to the beach during summertime. They arrived in a beat-up station wagon. The last time I had seen them, they had long straight black hair down their back and wore bellbottoms and tight T-shirts. This time, they arrived wearing a black navy jacket with epaulettes and pinstriped pants. Their black hair had been cut short on the sides and brushed back into a pompadour.
As we drove down to Provincetown, Mass., where they had been living, they made it clear that I wasn’t allowed to call them Mom. Or, for that matter, tell anyone they were my parent. Let them think what they want, they said, there’s no need to point out our relationship. (I still refer to them, rather hesitantly, as “my mother,” since they didn’t give me any other term to use, and I can’t not think of them as my parent.) They had also changed their name to Abraham.
I looked at them driving and, even though I was a child, I could tell their look was rather extraordinary.
The other day I heard the theme for this year’s Met Gala was inspired by Sally Potter’s 1992 film of Virginia Woolf’s 1928 book Orlando. I was filled with nerdish delight that an event so mainstream would be centred on a book that was so influential to me. I thought it was apropos that this book should resurface now, when ideas of gender have so radically become part of the public conversation. Read more via Globe and Mail