In this last installment of our “Two Sides” series, we’ll hear stories from a brother and sister, Susan Kay Maller and Dan Boyd. Despite being born 18 years apart, Susan and Dan have similar memories of growing up with their mother — though how they dealt with these situations couldn’t be more different.
Part 1: Looking back on her childhood, Susan Kay Maller tries to understand her mother’s behavior.
Part 2: Forced to walk home from school after his mother forgets to pick him up again, Dan Boyd struggles with feelings of frustration.
Dan Boyd is the founder of Story Luck, a nonprofit organization with a mission to educate people on the art of storytelling. He invites you to attend his latest creative endeavor, Workshop Workshop, an interactive online show that teaches 5L1K storytelling strategies. His older sister, Susan Kay Maller, is a permanent cast member, in addition to being a mother and accountant.
Story Transcripts
Part 1: Susan Kay Maller
My little brother Danny is 18 years younger than me. He loves storytelling. He says my stories are good but, I don't know. He says he wants us both to tell stories on the same subject.
Susan Maller first caught the storytelling bug in high school. Though her life took her away from storytelling after that first magical moment, her brother, Dan Boyd, has helped her come around to storytelling once again.
I'm not a writer and I don't consider myself a storyteller. I'm an accountant and a mother, but he wants to know what it was like growing up with mom.
His voice coming through the phone as I drive home from work, “Do you really think Mom has ADHD? Because maybe that changes how I see my childhood.”
I don't know. My mother's never been diagnosed with anything. All I know is what it was like growing up.
I have anecdotes, and maybe they come together and mean something, and maybe they don't. All you can really know is what it was like for you.
Our mother was warm, lively, creative and busy. She's a go-getter. And she thinks if you really want to get ten things done in a day, the way to do it is to commit to 20 and then you get half of them done.
My mother was almost always late and then drove my dad crazy. As a child, I just normalized it as best I could. She could not get to places on time, especially church.
Every Sunday, before Danny was born, I'd be standing with my two brothers DJ and Chris just mulling about the front door, watching a single large vein in my dad's forehead appear and pulse in Morse code as if it was saying, “I am so very, very upset.”
It seemed to me every week it was my dad's goal to get us to mass on time and every week it was my mom's goal to get us there late. Unlike my dad and my brother DJ, I didn't mind getting to mass late, but it hurt to see how upset it made my dad. I wish she could be on time for him. I just could not figure out why my mom was always late.
My dad's viewpoint, she just did not care enough about him or God to be on time.
Dad is nearly teeth-grinding mad as we were closing in on 15 minutes late for mass, muttering unintelligibly at his children to get into the backseat. We shuffle out the door, Sunday best. We shuffle out into the driveway, pile into the car, me in the middle seat to keep my brothers from fighting.
Now, our father was six-feet tall and my mom was five-feet-six-inches, so whenever we drove, she had to pull the seat up. That way, she could touch the gas and brake pedals.
Like clockwork, when my dad got into the car his legs were squished up into his chest and he would yell, “Maureen, why can't you put the seat back for me?” My mom never did this one courtesy for him.
As an adult, I wondered why didn't my dad just check it before getting into the car. I never could figure out this mom-and-dad dynamic. It seemed to me that she loved him but this felt sneakily mean. She would always want a million things done at one time and bombard my dad with a ton of tasks that he couldn't possibly finish in a day. It just all seemed mean to me.
I tell Danny that I don't know if she has ADHD. No one ever actually addressed the fact that maybe there was something wrong with my mom. My dad just figured she did not care enough about other people to be on time, and at no point did anyone ever ask themselves, maybe there's something wrong with mom.
Looking back as I write this, even when it was dangerous, we still didn't ask what's wrong, because even when it was dangerous it was just normal. We never knew anything else.
Case in point, we had just bought this Impala from Grandpa, and two weeks before this incident we had driven down to Florida to pick it up to drive it back up to Michigan. It was mom's turn to drive us to school. DJ was like dad. He hated being late. DJ was white-knuckling the back of her seat but it didn't make any sense to me, because of course we were late. We were always late.
But DJ had something special, so he's leaning up and screaming in mom's ear, “I can't be late to school again. You always do this to me. You are inconsiderate and it's going to get me a detention. I have a very important project today and you are blowing it for this family. Your constant irresponsibility is going to get me failed.”
Flustered, she didn't see the red light. Boom! T-boned right in front of the school. We grabbed our backpacks and hoofed it, left mom to deal with the police and the tow trucks. The car was totaled, but we were all physically fine.
Is that ADHD or is that it's hard to drive with a backseat driver?
She runs red lights and stop signs and passes buses when the Do Not Pass sign is clearly visible, but she usually doesn't get hit.
Another time my mom was supposed to pick up the neighborhood children and me from the outdoor ice skating rink. At 10:00 p.m. the people running the rink said, “Sorry, we've got to close everything down.”
They shut off the warming shed and ushered us out into the parking lot where it was pitch black, because they also shut off the lights. And we just waited. Finally, my mom's headlights pulled into the parking lot.
After she dropped off the other children I asked, “Mom, how did you finally remember to come pick us up?”
“Oh, one of the other mothers called and asked where her child was.”
I didn't get mad. At this point I knew I shouldn't expect her to follow through on her time commitments.
My mom's got a lot of friends. People love her spontaneity and charisma. You know she's late but she gets it done in the end. She's good at delegating too, or maybe because she packs so much in her family has gotten good at helping her.
Her best friend is Angie. One day, Angie asked her to help out with a fun run she's organizing. Angie doesn't want this screwed up. My mom delegates the task to my dad and me.
So dad and I get the giant, yellow McDonald barrels that McDonalds will fill up with orange drink for charity events. We load up the barrels filled with the sticky, sugar water and drove them to the park, but no one was there. So, phoneless, we wander the park looking for Angie and the racers, but no one is there.
Finally, after a few hours, Angie arrives and we asked, “Angie, what's going on? Where is everyone?”
She explained, “I'm so sorry. I told your mom the race started two hours earlier than it did. That way she would end up getting here on time.”
So maybe mom wasn't trying to be sneakily mean to dad. She wouldn't do that to Angie. I knew how much she loved Angie. She praised Angie and Angie's children. She was always late to everything for everybody. Try as she might, my mom couldn't be on time.
I asked Danny, “Is that what ADHD is? Does it feel like people are doing it on purpose but they aren't?”
No one ever said that maybe there was something actually physically or mentally wrong with my mother. It was just the way she was. It was consistent.
I talked it out too. She just did not actually care that she was late for everything, but maybe she couldn't be on time. Or maybe ADHD means you just can't care? No one talked about trying to mitigate her lateness. No one asked if maybe she could use some tools so she could be on time. No one asked her, “Do you even want to be on time?”
We took it for granted that she would forget us and be late to everything. That was normal. At the time we had two options: get mad or choose not to care. I took the later position. I chose not to care. So, often, I started to think that being late and forgetting things was just as normal as remembering things and being on time.
When I was in my twenties, my mom requested that I and my boyfriend drive up to my brother Chris's place in Detroit. She would meet us there. I said okay. My boyfriend and I made the four‑hour slog up to Chris's place.
When we got there, we called to see if she even left yet. She explained she had things to do and that we should just stay the weekend. She would be there in two days. Being two days late was pushing it even for her. Still, I waited and she showed up two days later, bubbly and confused as to why this would bother us. Didn’t we love Chris? Wasn’t it fun to be with family?
She couldn't be on time -- maybe from her point of view, no one could. If she couldn't do it, how could it be an important thing to do for someone? How could this impossible feat, a thing she'd never done in her entire life, be so special? In fact, she had years of lived life experience to prove that it wasn't.
She always got there eventually and everything was fine. Some parents don't get there in the end. She always did. I wonder, does the diagnosis matter? My mother is eighty-one and has some sort of dementia. Or maybe just her weak heart makes it hard to think. I don't know exactly what is wrong with her. We still aren't good at talking about it. No one in the family will let on that something is wrong. No one will actually tell me if they took her to the doctor to get her checked out. My dad is still not very patient with her, even though at this point it's a pretty obvious cognitive issue. She has trouble following a story you're telling. She gets off the phone fast because it's too hard for her to carry a conversation. Recipe directions she memorized are lost to her. And there's a small, creeping paranoia that she didn't used to have. Sundays before COVID, my two kids and I get in the car to go to Mass. We get there late. It's the Boyd family tradition -- get to Mass late, but never leave early. My boys know the tradition. They grew up with it. No one is upset. It is just the way our world runs.
Part 2: Dan Boyd
Almost 30 years ago on the last day of fifth grade, my mom was supposed to pick me up after school. On the long walk home, I daydreamed about my mother. Maureen Boyd, she looks like a mother. Squeezable, made for hugging, a soft warrior with kind, melt-heart eyes. Made for lying next to. Curled up together on the couch as dad clicked between channels trying to dodge commercials. She'd let me pretend to sleep. Tell my father, “Oh, don't wake him. I'll take him upstairs after the next show's ended.” She'd gently run her fingers through my hair.
Susan, with her younger brother Dan, founder of Story Luck. Dan has been producing storytelling shows and podcasts since 2004.
Dad, all five o'clock-shadow, would kind of grumble, “You sure he's asleep?”
She'd shush those grumbles away. “He's perfect the way he is.”
But that day, she forgot me. She won't be remembering the yellow-on-yellow Ohio sun's out, so why do I really care? The grass is green. I like the exercise. Five miles, no big deal.
I was one of those kids, strong jawline coupled with a Princeton haircut, clean cut and Catholic school uniform. Steel blue eyes hidden behind too-big-for-my-face, dorkalicious glasses, hunched under a backpack that was bursting at the seams filled with, “What if I need them?” Clutching an alto saxophone case, I start my way home.
Today was often ‘today was today, but today could be tomorrow, could be next week’ you know. You just never knew when you were going to be forgotten. When to wait an hour in the parking lot alone or when to just head off. Sometimes, she'd see me walking, pull over and pick me up. Sometimes she wouldn't. Would just keep driving. And I'd swear, call her names, curse.
I'd get home and she'd either feign, “Where were you? I was looking all over,” or she'd say, “I'm so sorry,” in this tone of voice that just wasn't believable because it happened so often.
How do you forget having a child? I'd ask her, “Is this retribution? Is this passive-aggressive punishment for some unknown slight?”
I'd wonder, did I forget to do the dishes or clean my room or swear when I thought she wasn't around? Read the wrong book? What's the universe so mad about that I deserve to be forgotten?
She’d demure.
I had a religion teacher who used to say, “True sorrow is shown through a change of behavior, son.”
Walking home, I thought about confession, thought about the sins I repeated, wondered if I was being insincere when I confessed unclean thoughts and actions, entitlement, self‑centeredness. I figured, at least a little.
A friend of mine from grade school died recently and I've been telling all these stories about growing up. Live lit shows on podcasts and workshops, and people ask, “How do you remember it so clearly?”
It's the long walks home. They were contemplative exercises. Prayer, meditation, imagination expeditions. I'd memory palace my days and tomorrows, I'd conjure my friends to walk next to me, talked to them, tried to guess what they'd say about this, that or the other, test my theories when I got back to school the next day.
Being left in a car, hot and sweaty alone, you spend that time exploring your imagination and philosophy. I thought about social hierarchies, I thought a lot about love.
My mother forgot me a lot. She left me in churches, cars, parking lots, field trips, day camps, schools, grocery stores and malls. “You wait here. I'll be right back.”
Hot or cold, alone, missing her, I thought a lot about love. “I love you,” my mother told me all the time.
When I was a little kid, she'd pack my lunch every day. She'd slip notes into the brown paper bag. She'd write them in a code only we understood. One-four-three. I love you.
My mother has this face that you trust. Lost children would pick her out of a crowd, ask her to help them find their mothers. Irony? Maybe some kind of reverse karma. She had to pay that angry universe back for losing me all the time.
It happened a lot in second grade. And before I was old enough to be left home alone for extended periods of time, I'd march into the mall, find some form of security and they'd say, “Are you lost, little boy?”
“No. I know exactly where I am. It's my mother who is lost. Please call her.”
Some people don't get to hear, “I love you.”
Humping it home, I thought a lot about those words, words I heard all the time. Some kids don't get that. I know that now.
I dated this girl. She was 17 before her dad ever told her. He was drinking at a bar, called her to remind her about some errand she needed to run. And when he hung up, the bartender said, “Wasn't that your daughter?”
“Yeah?”
“Didn’t you tell her you loved her?”
“Yeah?”
“You didn't tell her you loved her. You've got to always end your phone calls with ‘I love you’. Daughters need to hear that, need to hear it every time you call.”
Her dad never forgot again.
My mother didn't forget the words. She just forgot I existed. When you're alone and forgotten, your mind free-associating, you traverse time to past time, imagine futures that may and pasts that probably did.
I snapped out of all that just after crossing that hot, black tar strip that was State Route 224, where the speed limit was 60 but people drove as fast as they could. Sweating under the butter‑on‑toast yellow Ohio sun, within spitting distance of a cornfield, I thought about love. Thought about what it meant to me, what I wanted in love.
I came to the conclusion when she said the words she was lying. Lying just like when she said she'd pick me up. That even if she wasn't lying, I didn't want the kind of love she had to offer. I didn't want the sweet notes, the grand gestures, sneaking a birthday cake into school, a huge Christmas. I didn't want her fussing about the way I looked. I had all that proof so I took it for granted.
In fifth grade, I wanted the only aspect of love she couldn't muster. To be remembered. I wanted to be told the truth because she lied about other things too. Lied to cover up her forgetfulness, common ones, big ones, little ones. Whatever the closest thing on her mind was, that was the most important thing. There was no triage, no prioritization. She had no concept of time.
Even now, she does this thing. She'll get a phone call. A friend will ask her to come over. “Okay. I'd love to come over. When? Three? Okay, it's two now and it takes an hour to get there. Perfect. See you at three.”
I'll plead with her, “But Mom, you're in the middle of baking cookies. You're going to want to get changed. You also said you have to get gas.”
“It's only an hour away. I'll be fine. I'm not going to call her back over a quick gas stop.”
It's not just gas. Between the cookies and the need to change, you'll get another phone call and forget all about the fact that you told her you were coming over. Tell her you can't be there till like five.
My father will tell me to drop it. Or if I win, she'll call and say, “Danny convinced me. I can't be there till 3:15,” and my brain will explode every time she does this.
I remember the conclusion that I came back to when I was a little boy on that long walk home. I feel the weight of the backpack straps cutting into my shoulders, the strain in my fist from holding that saxophone case. The muscles remember. My body reminds me, “She's a liar. She doesn't love me. You can't trust her.”
Now that I'm an adult, I can see something in her friends. Her true friends, they don't care. Her family outside of me, maybe my sister Susan a little, they don't really care.
My Aunt Janet, her sister, brittle now but not for her age, “Oh, that's just your mom. You can't hold that against her. She's been this way since she was a little… she's been this way since she was a little kid. Uncle Gary was a little like this. You just don't invite her anywhere you don't want to be. Invite someone you want to be with, because when your mom shows up, it'll be worth the wait.”
Those that love my mom take her as she is. They love her perfectly, love her the way she comes, tell her to come. Come as she may, come as she is, they accept her. They get her, know that it won't change. Love the things about her that are worth loving and forgive the rest.