Jane G. Reed, 1937-2023

This has always been my favorite picture of my mother. It was her high school graduation photo, from 1955.

For most of my life, my mom was the person I felt closest to in the world. Our relationship wasn't always easy -- she struggled when I came out as gay and she never understood my more artistic interests -- but nonetheless I see so much of her in myself. Not physically, because in that department I take after my dad's side of the family, but in my relentless practicality, my Protestant thrift and my somewhat snarky sense of humor. Every once in a while I'll make a wry remark and Dave will say, "That's your mother talking!"

Mom was born in Cambridge, Mass., in 1937. My grandfather was there teaching at MIT, and my grandmother was a recent graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music. That's Mom, above, as a girl, with her mother and younger brother.

When she was young the family moved to Hyattsville, Md., after my grandfather took a job with the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. Perhaps my grandfather's good head for math and science influenced my mom's interest in numbers. If there's any truth to the old right brain vs. left brain dichotomy, Mom was left brain all the way.

Although her parents were conservative socially, they always encouraged her academically and professionally. She was never told there were things she couldn't or shouldn't do as a woman, and she excelled in math and graduated from Goucher College in Baltimore as a math major before getting her master's in mathematics from the University of Maryland.

She worked with early computers at the U.S. Bureau of Standards in the summers during college, a job she loved. She met my father, a fellow math student, in graduate school and they got married in 1962. Soon afterwards, my parents took faculty jobs in the math department at the newly created University of South Florida in Tampa.

I came along in 1966, and my brother in 1970.  My mom continued working during those years, teaching at the university, but the early '70s and the sexual revolution were a tumultuous time for marriages all across the country and my parents divorced in 1974. It was an event that shook my mom to her core. She was furious at my father for years, even though Dad always contributed to our support and remained part of our lives. Through the rest of the '70s and '80s Mom saw pretty much every hardship through the lens of her divorce. She felt betrayed, and even decades later she always did her best to avoid speaking to him.

She and I had a good relationship, but in many ways -- especially when I was a child -- she did not get me. I liked to draw and write and take pictures and daydream and I was never very academically focused. I was perfectly happy making Bs and Cs in school, particularly in math class. She'd try to help me with math homework but it tested her patience. When I was in high school we invariably wound up in screaming matches that we called the "Algebra Wars." She couldn't comprehend why I had such trouble with numbers, which came so easily to her.

If I ever showed her anything I'd written -- a poem or a story -- rather than offer praise or criticism she'd often say, "Well, I don't really know much about writing." But on the other hand, she was a constant reader and often recommended books to me, which I always appreciated. (Until she told me to read "Catch-22," which I thought was terrible.)

In her own way she was supportive, but we were just so different. There's no question she made personal sacrifices for me and my brother. She never had another romantic relationship after my dad -- at least, not that I ever heard about. But I don't think she really wanted one. She came to enjoy her independence.

This is a terrible picture of my mom and brother, swimming in the lake behind our house in the '70s. I always laugh when I think of that bathing suit -- the green skirt suit with the little white flowers. She wore it for about 20 years, I think. She always said she couldn't find a decent replacement.

After I came out to my mom as a college student in the mid '80s, it took her a while to process my being gay, though of course it wasn't a total surprise. She was afraid it was somehow "her fault," and she worried about me because it was the height of the AIDS crisis. On some level she genuinely thought I might die (something I believed myself, despite always being careful).

I'm not sure I ever got over feeling like I had to make up for a terrible shortcoming. I organized trips with her several times -- to New Mexico, Germany, New Zealand and Italy -- and she came to see me when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco and later, when I lived in New York (above). I'm always up for traveling, but I also felt responsible for making sure that she had those experiences -- that being single didn't keep her at home.

She had a firm sense of boundaries. She almost never inquired about my private life or relationships, though when I did mention boyfriends she was outwardly supportive. And when I married Dave she welcomed him into the family, and was always affectionate and friendly to him. She was quite liberal politically and she had nothing but scorn for homophobes or Bible thumpers -- despite being a lifelong Presbyterian churchgoer. Still, I've always felt that given a chance to flip a switch and make me straight, she'd have done it.

I've written before about her sale of our family home in 2015. In retrospect, I think she undertook that sale partly because she felt herself becoming more infirm. She moved into a senior community with graduated levels of care, and in 2019 she moved into an apartment in a memory care unit (above). When she died, she was in nursing care, essentially incapacitated. Time is ultimately cruel.

Even through our conflicts I always felt loved. She was a good mom. I will miss her.