Okay, listen up.
If I hear another lame story from a gay man who is over 25 who claims that his mother doesn’t know he is gay, I am going to hit my head against the nearest fixture.
Unless she is an idiot (mothers usually are not), has lived most of her life under a rock (that went out with the stone ages, right?) or never raised you (now, that takes some doing but happens now and then), your mother knows, knew you were gay before you knew it!
Sweet Mother - she always knows!!
Mothers want the best for us, bless them, but they also tend to be discreet souls who mind their [grown] children’s business as much as they hide the fact that they are doing so.
Therefore, please give your mother some credit if you are above a certain age and your sexual predisposition is to men or women of your gender. Your mother knows it even if she will likely keep it to herself.
Why else do you think mothers are the ones who show the least shock when you finally decide that you are going to bite the bullet and come out? Fathers, bless them, too, tend to bury themselves in their world and children are but a mere parenthesis. This is especially true of African fathers who see their role as breadwinners and not much else beyond that.
So, mothers do the school runs, sit by your side when your nostrils are clogged, when you are running a through-the-roof temperature and when you fuss over nothing.
No one that close to you can fail to notice the tell-tale signs.
If you are over 25, have lived with your mother for a reasonable period, and you know that you are gay, your mother already knows it, too. She might prefer to live in denial over what she knows, might even disavow what she knows by exhorting you to get married and live happily ever after.
She nonetheless knows that you are gay!!! Prince Nico Mbarga couldn’t have put it any better in his classic:
Sweet mother I no go forget you
For dey suffer we you suffer for me yeah [2x]
When i dey crry my mother go carry me
She go say my pikin wetin you dey cry yeah yeah
Stop stop! stop stop!! stop stop!!!
Make you no cry again oo …
If anything Prince Nico Mbarga sings in Sweet Mother speaks to your experience with your own mother, you are deluding yourself if you think that she doesn’t know you are gay.
She does. She is merely keeping it to herself because she is a … mother.
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Ah! Very true! I am 50 (unmarried). A few years ago my mother revealed a dream she had about me (with another man, ‘making out’). She asked me for the ‘meaning’ of the dream. Of course, I played dumb – knowing, of course, that she ‘knew’.
She still prays for me to find the ‘right’ woman etc.
I have, since then, arrived at the same conclusion as you: Mothers know the deep secrets of their sons.
Gay Nigerian
Your mother is a great diplomat, bless her.