motherblog

OCTOBER 3, 2025

MOTHER OF SAMI

You know you are in your middle ages when you can step out of your body and see your parent. Ever since I was in my twenties, fully and securely out to the world as a gay male person, I knew that I would probably become some version of my mother and then, and into my thirties and even forties, welcomed it and glamorized it. I think a bit differently now, not because I love my mother any less but because I’ve noticed especially recently that gay men seem to really fetishize a certain idealization and idolization of their mothers (books by Michael Koresky and Ocean Vuong; films by Almodovar [duh] and Xavier Dolan) and I’ve never idealized nor idolized my mother even through my love and admiration. I think I manifest aspects of my mother that have nothing to do with parenting (snap judgments of people; bad temper; stubbornly being an artist even through lack of big success) but what has recently depressed me quite a bit is that I feel I am manifesting aspects of my father in my parenting...of my dog.

Our dog Nella is now a senior citizen (eleven years old this September or so—she was adopted from a shelter at six months of age) which makes for a weird parent-child relationship. Last year we adopted a second dog, Sami, and parenting him has brought out the parts of my genetic makeup I wish I could not only disavow but erase; but genes, and flesh in general, has a mind of its own. Sami was a difficult puppy and the last year has been very difficult for me, Nella, and her other parent and my partner Roddy. But just as it seemed things had begun to iron itself out into calm, Sami has begun slurping himself. Of course, he is a dog and all dogs lick stuff and themselves; Sometimes Nella licks our bedspread so much that I’ll go in the bedroom and it looks like someone took a giant piss in the middle of the (human) bed. But Sami slurps himself at night, and loudly: he is a 70-pound Golden Retriever/Boxer/German Shepherd mix. When he slurps it is loud and wet and irritating. His sleeping crate is in our bedroom so when he slurps at 4 am it tears my nerves. In the past few months, he’s taken to waking up whenever I, Roddy, or even Nella so much as turn over. When he wakes up he immediately begins slurping himself. He’s had fleas so we’ve flea-bombed him with medication. He gets regular baths. But still he slurps, and last night, my nerves got so fried I got up and moved him out of his crate so he could sleep somewhere else.

I didn’t scream but I’m sure it felt like a scream to Sami, and as I was saying “OK Sami, get out of here” I felt awful, like a horrible person and parent but I couldn’t stop myself. Roddy got upset with me; he’s been hinting that Sami’s slurping was a neurotic reaction to my nervy harsh tone with him when he slurps—sisyphean irritation. I felt and feel awful because this is the behavior of my father, to whom I’ve been estranged for almost 25 years now (My parents divorced when I was in my twenties; in my opinion, 20 years too late). I dread becoming him but there it was this morning at 4 am: my dad in the fleshy shell of me.

I’ve studied enough psychoanalytic theory and even theories of psychotherapeutic practice to know I am not my father, nor do I have to become him. And of course I will try to become a more patient dog-parent to Sami. But those genes swirling inside me. I wish I could bust them up, as Edith Wharton writes, “like atoms whirling away from each other in some wild centrifugal dance.”