My Mother Found Spider-Man

A Mother’s Day Note About Love, Attention, and 7-Eleven

Photo by Gabriel Tovar on Unsplash

Spider-Man was coming to the 7-Eleven.

My mother knew about it, somehow. This was pre-internet, so she must have read an article in the town paper or seen a flyer at the library. Maybe Tom Ryan dropped the news between a traffic report and the new Bob Seger hit on WOMC as we drove to T-ball practice. I don’t know. It didn’t matter. Because Spider-Man was coming, and my mom knew about it.

And my mom cared. She cared when I cared, and boy did I care about Spider-Man. So we cared together that he was coming to the 7-Eleven. I don’t remember the details, but I probably talked about it all day. She must have been exhausted by my excitement, though I’d never know it. Exhaustion was not an emotion my mom shared with me if she felt it. But I assume it was there. How could it not have been? She was young, with two kids, a house to run, groceries to stretch, dinners to make, and a checklist full of chores that waited for her as she made one small boy feel like the center of the world and listened one more time about radioactive spider bites and web shooters. But if her day was tiring, she didn’t make that part of mine.

By the time we got into the car, I probably met Spidey a million times in my head. We were going to be pals. I knew it. My mom knew it too, or at least she knew I hoped it.

And then, when we got to the 7-Eleven, he wasn’t there.

I’m sure I didn’t notice the empty parking lot as we pulled in. Or that there were no kids in a line wrapped around the store. But my mom probably did, and I’m certain she felt it before I did too. Maybe even more than I did. I don’t know if we had the wrong time or the wrong store, but the short of it was that a guy in a Spider-Man suit had moved on to the next stop in his glamorous convenience-store tour. What I do remember, though, is disappointment. I built the whole thing up in my mind, and then we walked in and it collapsed. We found Slurpee machines, half-filled candy racks, and a couple bored clerks. No Spider-Man.

My mom. She must have been disappointed too. Or at the very least she knew the shape of how my disappointment felt. She was a young mother and likely acquainted with the feeling you get low in your stomach when hope and reality collide. It’s not the same things, missing Spider-Man and missing your youth, I know. Clearly different scales. But among the many tricks my mom carried in her oversized purse was the ability to match her feeling with mine. Empathy, I suppose, but bigger than that really, and a bit more like mind reading. She always knew. And she always knew what to do next. Still does.

So we went home. I probably cried and didn’t notice her pick up the phone. A real phone, attached to the wall, with a cord and a number pad. No internet, so no shortcuts. She called someone, probably followed by several someones. There must have been a phone book involved, if anyone remembers what those are these days. There was no app, no store locator, no events page, no chatbot pretending to be sorry. Just my mom watching her little boy wipe away some tears as he pulled out his Matchbox cars and tried to forget how Spider-Man was supposed to be his pal. And she worked the phone. Exhaustion and disappointment she kept to herself, for herself. Not for me.

And somehow, she found him. Who knows how many calls or numbers or confused convenience-store clerks she had to cut through. But she did. All of them. For me. She packed up my toys, put on my jacket, and loaded me into the car. And she drove. I don’t know how far we went. Too far is my guess, but that word didn’t really exist for my mom. Still doesn’t. She must have had other things to do. Errands, dinner, laundry, bills, a pile of obligations waiting at home. Still, we drove across town, or across several towns, and really across whatever distance existed between a disappointed kid and a man in a Spider-Man costume.

I’ve been trying to name what that felt like, and I’ve been struggling and getting it wrong. It’s almost unseeable, unknowable. It’s a shimmer at the edges of my life. A protective barrier my mom may not realize exists even though she built it.

It would be easy to reduce that feeling and say she made me the center of her world, but that’s not right, and it makes her world too small. My mom had a whole life. She had my sister and my dad, yes, but she also had sisters and brothers of her own, friends, bowling leagues, golf leagues, neighbors, welcome wagon meetings, phone calls, plans, jokes, errands, recipes, housework, dreams and desires, and whatever else filled the days of a young woman trying to be herself while also being a mother.

Her life was going to be full with or without me. But when she turned her attention toward me, the world narrowed because she turned all the way. It didn’t erase the rest of her life or any of it. She just moved everything else to the edges for a while. It was like she crawled into bed and pulled the blanket over our heads and built a world out of attention and love. For that moment, for all of those moments, there was only us and whatever we chose to allow in.

And it wasn’t just that Spider-Man moment. It was trips to the grocery store, where I rode the end of the cart while she laughed at my silly impression of Steve Martin from The Jerk. It was her pretending not to notice as I tossed a package of Chips Ahoy! into the cart while she effortlessly calculated what to cross off her list of needs to make room for my wants. It was staying up late after my father went to bed, and watching Casablanca or The Out-Of-Towners with a ten-year-old, somehow translating the adult world of romance and chaos into an adventure I could understand and love with her. It was getting up before anyone else to make sure breakfast was on the table and lunches were in bags. It was hugs every day as we stepped out the door, knowing it would be bookended by another as we crossed back in.

It was crisscrossing all of the 7-Elevens of the Detroit suburbs hunting a man in an ill-fitting Spider-Man costume because she made a promise, and breaking a promise had a cost that was greater to her than gas or time.

We found him, eventually, and I saw Spider-Man. We got the picture. Maybe there was an autograph too, though I don’t remember that part very well. Spider-Man, as it turns out, was not very memorable. A man in a suit who didn’t sound like Peter Parker at all. He didn’t even have webs. We didn’t become pals. I don’t think he even asked for my name. He may have had a small gut pushing out his suit, but I can’t really recall.

But while I don’t remember much about Spidey, I do remember the chase. My mom, refusing to let the day end at the wrong 7-Eleven. I remember that something I loved mattered enough for her to will it into existence over copper wires and rubber tires and an endless chase across the metro Detroit area. I remember her shuffling her schedule, her day, her life really, to fit small works of magic into my own. And while Spider-Man is little more than a faded picture in an aging mind full of memories, it sits next to a lifetime of moments laser-etched of the woman who made them happen. She was the only superhero I met that day.

I doubt she remembers it the way I do. For her, it was probably one more chase in a life full of things that needed pursuing, or fixing, or soothing. But for me, at fifty-four, it’s a core childhood memory. One that birthed an intensity and love I carried to my own parenthood.

When I run to the grocery store because we’re out of milk or need lunches for the week, my son and daughter come with me. I’ll ask them and they’ll say yes. Because we understand it’s more than an errand. It’s a chance to connect, to laugh, and to sneak in a few unplanned snacks. It’s a chance for joy. My daughter and I built entire rituals around movies and movie marathons. Once we watched the entirety of the Harry Potter series back-to-back-to-back, twenty-some hours. We made themed breakfast, lunch and dinner to eat while we watched. We made butterbeer and printed 3D mugs to hold our cups. We opened Harry Potter figurine blind boxes and built Harry Potter Lego sets while we watched. My son and I, we built worlds around trading cards and video games and fishing. In each of these, for each of them, I pulled the covers over our heads and built a world out of attention and love, just as my mom had for me. And I know they feel it. I can see it. I felt it too.

I wrote recently about a fairy door my wife and I made for our daughter, and about all the magic that became real around it. Notes. Glitter. Tiny secrets. At the time, I thought we were building something for her, and we were. But I was also using tools my mother handed me years before. She taught me that if a child loves something, you don’t have to watch it from the outside. You can step inside it with them. You can let the magic be real for everyone.

That’s what my mom did with Spider-Man. That’s what she did in the grocery store. That’s what she did on the couch with the old movies. She made the world smaller without making it less. She made a place small enough for two people, and still somehow large enough to hold our entire lives.

So thank you, Mom. Thank you for finding Spider-Man. Thank you for Monday grocery trips. Thank you for the cookies in the cart, the chalkboards and Lego streets, the old movies, the homemade sauces, the cart rides, the practices, the lessons, the birthdays, the Christmas mornings, the hugs in the kitchen, and the hand on my back while the movie played. Everything that was too much and too wonderful to ever fit into the confines of what my words can say.

Thank you for noticing what I loved. And thank you for teaching me how to notice what others love too.

I’m fifty-four now, and we live a country apart. But I still can’t pass a 7-Eleven without thinking about you. I still can’t walk into a grocery store without feeling some part of those Mondays come back. Ask my wife. She has never fully understood why I love the grocery store so much. And she’s probably heard the Spider-Man story too many times.

I understand it now though. Some part of me is still walking the aisles with you, watching the cart fill up, wondering what we might make when we get home. And some part of me is still in that car seat next to you, wondering how many 7-Elevens there are in the world, knowing there would never be too many for you, and looking forward to Spider-Man.