I call you Tatum, sometimes, because you weren’t always a mom, although when you were you were at your best, and that’s why you’re still here, today. I call you Tatum because your name is Tatum but also because it was a reminder that maybe, sometimes, I needed more, but that doesn’t mean I’m going anywhere — I know me leaving has always made you scared. I called you Tatum, most of my life — and sometimes still do — because you liked to say we were friends. I called you Tatum because you were happiest — or at least you smiled the most — when someone called you my sister. I call you Tatum because sometimes I miss my mom.

But today I can call you Mama, and I do. When I was little, you were my mom, until your boyfriend gave you heroin. You were my mom when you were clean, between rehabs, but then sometimes you were Tatum, too. Tatum used to leave in the middle of the night and sometimes not come back before morning. Tatum didn’t have a choice.

I used to think Tatum took my mom away. Now I think Mom and Tatum just wanted something different. I think Mom and Tatum didn’t always get along.

I remember when I was in treatment and they asked me to distance myself from you, because you were still using.

“She’s sober, for her,” I said.

“That’s not a thing,” they answered.

“She’s doing as well as she can,” I offered.

“That’s what enabling is,” they leaned in and told me. “Low expectations.”

I tried to do what they said, Tatum, but you fought it. When I got sober it felt like abandoning you because I don’t think you thought you could, and you knew we couldn’t be close anymore. I always knew you being my mother was keeping you alive, but Tatum kept growing inside you.

The bigger she got, the more I could only remember my mom.

“Boundaries,” they said. Boundaries, everyone says. I used to tell them that they didn’t understand. That if I didn’t answer your call you might kill yourself.

Until one day I didn’t answer and you did.

You were in a coma for six weeks, Mom, and I was in treatment. When you woke up you couldn’t talk, or walk, or remember. You couldn’t read when you got out of the coma, but you started drinking again. “For my pain,” you said. “For my rheumatoid.” I hoped — we all hoped — that the brain damage the stroke caused might kill Tatum, and just leave Mom, but it didn’t. Tatum has ninety-nine lives.

I don’t care that one of my earliest memories was you sending me to buy your cigarettes, or that I used to throw away your drugs. I don’t care that when I found a mirror, once, on your bathroom counter, your answer was I can do a line, if I want. I’m your mother. I don’t care that you had an overdose, again, which led to a stroke, and brain damage, and then tried to escape from the memory care facility, and then you drank. In a weird way I’m proud of you for that. That’s when I knew you were still alive. That’s when I knew you can’t kill Tatum.

But maybe, Mom, they can’t kill you.

I always believed that if I lived my own life, I would be abandoning you, but today I won’t. Today, taking care of you might actually help me. It’s hard to understand, but I don’t have to. It’s easier to do than know.

I used to tell those same counselors, again, that they didn’t understand. That I don’t want to give myself affirmations. That my problem is too much me.

“You need to give yourself more empathy,” they said. “Like you do your mother.”

But I spent too much of my life explaining myself and worrying about myself. I spent too much time justifying my behaviors and trying to be understood, always wondering what was wrong with me, and resenting you for not having a good answer.

I never asked anybody how I could be helpful.

I never asked you, Mom, how are you?

I didn’t know that in order to do that I’d have to forgive you. And I didn’t know that if I forgave you then maybe today might be okay for me too.

I wonder if I just feel guilty that I couldn’t save you, and that’s why I do what I do. I answer your calls, even though there are plenty. I arrange your doctor’s appointments, even though you go just to be seen. I order your groceries, even though you’re addicted to granola. I love you even though sometimes you make it hard.

But I also don’t have to save you anymore because you’re safe. Like a year and a half ago you told me you wanted to kill yourself. On your phone, you have voice-to-text enabled, but also text-to-speech. When there’s a word you want to remember, you save it in your notes and find it when you need it. It talks back to you flatly, like a computer. Suicidal — you pressed your phone and it read. You were drinking, then, and I thought to fly out, and rescue you. I thought of what I’d always done.

But instead, I finally understood that I can’t convince you to want to live.

I said: “Okay, mom. I love you. If you wanna try and stop, I think I can help you. But if you don’t I understand that, too.”

You told me to go fuck myself, but then you called me and I helped you. You haven’t had a drink since then, or a drug, and for that I’m proud of you. I’ve never really seen you, at anything, really try. But you do today. Sometimes I call you and you’re busy and you don’t have time for me. Somehow that feels less like Tatum and more like my mom.

I’m sorry I used to drink just to deal with you. When you called, I’d have a drink before I dialed you back. I promised myself I would never be like you — that I knew exactly what not to do. Yes, I drank. And then coke, because I worked in a bar, and doesn’t everyone? And painkillers, because they weren’t dope. And more painkillers, because I work so hard. And then more to just get out of bed. And then all of them because I had to. I felt bad for you — I sympathized — but I was different.

Today I’m so very lucky that we’re exactly the same.

We’re not the same in our experience, or in our point of view. You’ve been through everything — from an Oscar and a bad dad, to a divorce, a heroin problem and a young boyfriend — but I haven’t made it easy on myself, either. I almost drank myself to death, and you were almost at my funeral. I was so positive that I was different than you that I ended up being, in many ways, worse.

But the worst ones sometimes get better because we have to. We either die or we have to change.

I’m so lucky that I’m like you, because I get it now. Because I empathize I can forgive. I remember when I turned a corner with drugs, and it felt like there was no coming back, and I said, “Oh. That’s why.”

That’s why you used drugs around us. You didn’t have a choice. I didn’t have a choice.

But you do today, Mama, and I believe in you. But also that doesn’t matter — you have to believe in you. It doesn’t matter how much you love me if that doesn’t help you try.

So maybe we’re okay, and we can just love each other. There doesn’t have to be any lies, or secrets, anymore. You don’t have to complain about your pain all the time because I believe that you’re hurting. I don’t have to fly to LA every month to prove to you I love you. If you want, Mom, you can just believe me, and maybe if you do that you’ll believe in you, too. You could even believe in something bigger, if you wanted, because that makes you feel normal. Something that’s bigger than celebrity, because I think that’s only ever made you feel small.

In my mind, your stroke is the best thing that ever happened to you, and us. You’re alive today, which you most certainly wouldn’t have been, and there’s some hope you might be tomorrow.

Your other son told me, after what happened, that he’d already grieved you — that that’s how he survived — but I didn’t believe that. I believed he did — he has — but I didn’t believe that you were gone. Soon after your facility called me to tell me you escaped and I was positive. You can’t kill my ma. In fact, she’ll kill you for trying.

So I don’t care today, Mom — I love you for who you are. I don’t care, and I guess that’s what they mean when they say unconditional. A wiser person than me once told me there’s no such thing as unconditional love. If you get punched in the face you might pull away — that’s a condition. But you did that a lot, and you still can, but I’m not going anywhere. In fact I respect your fight.

I’ll still help you, Tatum, because you’re my mom. I forgive you, and you forgive me, and we forgive others, because we have to. Otherwise we’d both be dead.

And with forgiveness, I can see, and then I remember. I can see, first, how much you’ve always loved me, and how support is your first thought. I know how much you worried about me, and how much I kept you up. I know how guilty you felt about me using, too, and how much that broke your heart. I can see how big your heart is — I can see it coming back — and how you want what’s best for the world. I understand your causes — although they always make me scared, because they always make you sad — but you believe the world can be better, and for that you’re willing to fight. You gifted me with a big heart, and you taught me how to use it. You taught me about Big Love, which comes with big fear, and big heartbreak, but if you can manage those, you showed me how to give myself entirely to someone, and wear my heart outside my chest. You’ve always been mine, ours — the world’s — champion, and being there for you has let me see it. I get to see you get better, and fight. I get to see you be a mom, and support me. I get to see you find your way back to the thing you were always the best at, loving me, and your two other children. Loving yourself has never been so easy, but you can get there.

All you have to do is try. I’ve only ever hoped you could try, and I remember the day, teaching you to read, when I realized that’s just what you were doing. When I knew I was right all along.

I know what you mean when you sometimes say you want your life back. I’ve been there, too. This can’t be all there is — I miss shutting it off for a while. In many ways, for us, that feels better. But I promise you it’ll get better, Ma. It’s just the beginning. You’re alive, and you want to be alive, and I don’t care that you’re crazy, because I’m crazy, and I want you to be alive, too. So when you feel sad just try and remember. When you feel Tatum coming back, just call yourself “Mom.”

So Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. And Tatum too. Oh yes, and Nana — you’re a grandmother, now. Your mom never got better, but you can. You are. We are.

I’m proud to be Tatum’s son.

Kevin Jack McEnroe was born in Los Angeles to actress Tatum O'Neal and athlete John McEnroe. He was raised in New York and graduated from Columbia University with an MFA. He currently lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife and dog, Sunday. You can subscribe to his Substack, order his book, or keep up with the rest of his writing at KevinJackMcEnroe.com