How I Escaped Jami G’s Shadow

Many kids think their parents are larger than life, but my mom has been famous in my hometown for as long as I can remember. On school mornings I'd hobble downstairs half awake to the sound of her voice drifting from the kitchen. Many times I swore she was actually there. Then I'd see the box radio propped on the counter, talking to the toaster and all of middle Georgia.

In Macon, other mothers blended together like a trunk of Barbie dolls. My mom was her own brand. A local radio personality, she was recognized at restaurants and covertly trailed around grocery stores by admirers calling, "Is that you, Jami G?" She was on billboards lining the interstate wearing boxing gloves for a promotion, or in a jewelry ad with gleaming rocks around her throat. Making a getaway after a typical mother-daughter spat was simple, as long as I didn't drive down I-75.

My attitude and predilections never meshed with my town's slow-talking, deer-hunting, sports-as-religion milieu. But while I fumbled to find my identity, my mother built her career on the countless ways she was different. Everyone listened to her morning talk radio program. A liberal, Jewish Yankee, she was the perfect foil for her conservative cohost, who argued for rights to guns but not abortions. She wore her dissent like a badge of pride and shrugged off the hate mail that poured into the studio.

I was proud of her often—this confident woman who sparred with the good ole boys. But I was also young enough to be embarrassed by her public recognition. If my friends' mothers had their own opinions, they hid them. My mother's face, voice and world view pervaded our county like Georgia's omnipresent humidity. I could hardly leave the house without hearing about her.

When Jami G hosted zany infomercials—bouncing on beds at a mattress purveyor or wearing only a bath towel to sell stain remover—I often laughed with her. Other times I was embarrassed to hear about these capers before seeing them.

"Did I see your mama jumping on a bed on TV?" someone would ask.

"Nope, wasn't her," I'd lie.