One day at a time, Vance’s mother deals with her past and his future

MIDDLETOWN, Ohio – Here is the way Mr JD Vance introduced his mother to the world in his 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy:

He described how she hit him. Trapped him in a car, floored the gas pedal and told him they were going to die. Made him pee into a jar so she could use his clean urine to pass a drug test. Disappeared. Burned through people’s money. Slit her wrists. Crashed her minivan into a telephone pole.

These days, when Vance’s mother, Ms Beverly Aikins, introduces herself, it is often in simpler language. “Hi, family. I’m Bev,” she said at her regular Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in Middletown, Ohio, one Sunday in September. “I’m an alcoholic addict.”

A group of mostly older men murmured back, “Hi, Bev.”

It has been almost 10 years since she got sober from alcohol and heroin and all other manner of substances she used to put down her throat and up her nose. In that time, the book her son wrote became a bestseller and then a movie. He got elected to the Senate. He may very well be this country’s next vice-president.

His rise has thrust her, unexpectedly, into the world of national politics. This summer, he brought her to the Republican National Convention and shouted out her sobriety, framing the arc of her life as a tale of redemption.

It is all still a bit new to her. She is dimly aware that her son has become the figure of much outrage of late, but for the sake of her own sanity and sobriety, she says she remains purposefully oblivious to many of the controversies swirling around him.

On Sept 22, after her AA meeting wrapped up, she stuck around to explain that she would like to use this new platform of hers to help others who struggle with addiction.

“I want people to know to reach out, to try to get help,” she said, “and that recovery is hard, but it’s so worth it.”

“Addiction in our house was like the elephant in the room. Nobody ever said anything about it. We do now,” she added.

She grew up in an abusive household herself. Her father was an alcoholic who beat her mother, Mrs Bonnie Vance, who was known as “Mamaw” to Mr JD Vance. When Ms Aikins was 19, she had a daughter, Lindsay, who is five years older than Mr Vance. Mamaw and Lindsay looked after Mr Vance when his own mother could not.

Ms Aikins’ struggle with addiction began many years ago one day at work. She was a nurse. She got a bad headache and took a Vicodin pill. She loved the way it made her feel. She went home, bathed her children and cleaned her house.

Soon she began to purloin stronger pharmaceuticals, such as Percocet. She lost her job and her nursing license and, with it, her access to prescription pills. She began to snort heroin.

She lived that way for a long time. She eventually lost touch with her children. Rock bottom came in 2015, when she was living out of her car, a red Chevrolet Aveo. She checked into a sober living facility across the Ohio River in Covington, Kentucky. After she got out, her daughter helped her find a place to live back in Middletown.

Five years later, her son, who had by that point graduated from Yale Law School and worked in private equity, bought her a house. She lives there now with her daughter.

“JD’s Mom!”

When Republicans gathered in Milwaukee in July to officially nominate former president Donald Trump and Mr Vance as the top of their ticket, one of the more cinematic moments involved an unexpected cheer for Ms Aikins.

In his acceptance speech, Mr Vance described “single moms like mine, who struggled with money and addiction but never gave up”.

He continued, “I’m proud to say my mom is here, 10 years clean and sober. I love you, Mom.” The cameras panned to a teary-eyed Aikins as the convention hall broke into a spontaneous chant: “JD’s mom! JD’s mom! JD’s mom!”

It was a surreal experience for a woman who had never even watched a political convention on television before.

Ms Aikins’ parents were Democrats – Mamaw had an affinity for Bill Clinton – but these days, she is a registered Republican.

She described herself as “bipartisan” but then wondered, “Is that the right word? I don’t vote the party. I vote the person.”

In 2016, the person was Trump. “Nobody can buy him,” she said. She got to meet him at the convention. “He was just very humble and very nice to me and told me I had a great kid,” she said.

Part of the reason her son’s book was such a hit was that it was read by elites and the commentariat as a field guide for understanding places like Middletown and its inhabitants, the sorts of people who would send Trump to Washington.

Back in those days, Mr Vance’s view was that Trump was cynically preying on the despair of a destabilised white working class. How did he go from describing Trump as “cultural heroin” to becoming his running mate?

“I’m probably not the best person to answer that,” Ms Aikins said. “But I do think that JD saw, when he was in office, that things for people in our area got better. I think that’s why he changed his mind.”

“My own little bubble”

Two days after Mr Vance’s convention speech, Ms Aikins posted a long message on Facebook. “It’s been an exciting week,” she began, but then the post took a turn: “Seeing how my town, that I choose to live in and love has so much vitriol and hate for my child is devastating to my peace of mind I’ve fought so hard to have.”

She wrote that she would stay off social media until after the election.

“You see this hometown boy who’s doing so good, you would think no matter what your politics, you would just want to get behind him and root him on,” she said after her AA meeting in Middletown this month.

But her son’s combative style and his commentary about “childless cat ladies” and “the childless left” running the country have turned off many Americans, who find his views to be rather retrograde and judgmental. How could someone who was raised by women – his sister, his Mamaw and Aikins – end up being so dismissive of so many women’s lives?

Perhaps he has idealised a traditional family unit precisely because he never had one growing up. “I would agree with that statement,” his mother said. “For both of my kids, they didn’t grow up with a positive family unit. I know that they seemed to gravitate towards that in their adulthood.”

Three of the most famous women in the world – Oprah Winfrey, Taylor Swift and Jennifer Aniston – have all knocked Ms Aikins’ son for his “childless cat ladies” comment.

“I just choose to ignore that,” she said, “and ignoring the bad, I also have to ignore the good. I can live in my own little bubble and be comfortable.”

That bubble is important to her continued sobriety. The morning of her AA meeting, her son had given an eye-popping interview to CNN in which he tried to explain why he was spreading a debunked rumor that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were feasting on people’s pets.

Not only had Ms Aikins not seen this, she also claimed to have no idea what was happening (or not happening) in Springfield, which is just 80km from Middletown. “I’m not even on social media,” she said. “I watch Investigation Discovery. Is there something happening in Springfield?”

Cats. Dogs. Haitians. Her son.

“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t know.”

She added that she was really too busy with her own work to keep up with the news. She said she got her nursing license back, and she teaches at the treatment facility.

One political programme Ms Aikins does intend to watch is Mr Vance’s debate against Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, on Oct 1.

Asked what she thought of Mr Walz, Ms Aikins replied, “I’ve heard he was a teacher, which I have a lot of respect for teachers. If he attacks my baby, he might want to hide from me. But I think my baby can pretty much handle himself.”

Ms Aikins said she did not worry about any of this. “I think that JD is probably the smartest, most amazing young man, and everything he touches turns to gold,” she said. NYT