First up, Pam Sotto, Blaine’s mother.

She’d always planned on living out her retirement in her home country, but her marriage to John had stifled those plans. He wanted to stay in Columbus, since he was born and raised there, yet he had no empathy for Pam’s similar feelings.

One of the many reasons that it’s a good thing that they’d gotten divorced all those years ago.

Pam exists the plane and every step she takes make her feel lighter. Everything’s been arranged. She’s moving in with her cousin. They’ve never lost touch, even when they were living on the other side of the planet, and Pam is divorced and Jessa is a widow. They’re going to be two oldies living their final days together and they’re going to have a lot of fun!

Pam doesn't need the stereotypically American retirement plans in Florida when she can be here with one of her favourite family members.

Jessa is waiting for her when Pam goes through customs. They hug and it’s a tearful reunion. They hadn’t seen each other in two years.

“Ready to go?” Jessa asks.

Pam looks back to the border control. Of course, she isn’t really looking back to America, but it feels like that. She loved America. She even loved being American, but it’s over. It will be a memory. Everything else is left behind.

The moment Pam decided to move back to the Philippines, she knew that she was going to miss out on things. It’s part of living so far away. 

She didn’t expect Jessa to come into the living room, a couple of months later, waving her phone around, yelling: “Your boy’s boy has posted something bad!”

Pam has to read Kurt’s Firmspring statement several times before it truly sinks in.

It’s 9AM in Cebu, so Pam quickly checks the time in New York. It’s 9PM, previous day. Blaine must be awake. Pam tells her AI to call her son. Blaine picks up after a while.

“Mom?” he sounds confused and Pam curses herself for not calling more often. He sounds too surprised and confused to hear his mother.

“Hi baby,” she says sweetly.

“Hi mom,” Blaine says. He sounds tired. 

“Jessa told me something interesting today. She showed me Kurt’s latest Firmspring post,” Pam says. She can hear Blaine’s breath hitch. 

Eventually he says: “Oh.”

“Were you planning on telling me?” Pam doesn’t want to sound like she’s accusing him of something bad, but some of the bitterness that she’s feeling slips through.

“Well, we, uh, we wanted to wait it out, but as you may have read, our plans have changed.”

“That’s fine, Blaine,” Pam says and she hopes Blaine believes her. John always had the acting skills. Blaine and Cooper certainly didn’t get their natural talent from her or Cooper's mother. “Are you doing okay? This is quite a lot!”

“I manage, mom,” Blaine sighs. He sounds like a moody teen who’s tired of his mother’s questions.

Pam shakes her head. He can’t see it, obviously, so she says: “It’s okay to feel weird about this. Or lonely. I can imagine that it’s lonely.”

“Oh, thanks, mom, but I’m not. Kurt is still Kurt, but just different. And you know, Wes, Mae, Sebastian and Adam still live in the city. They help out as often as they can and so do Kurt’s par- friends. So do Kurt’s friends who live in the city.”

He was about to say ‘Kurt’s parents’. It doesn’t surprise Pam. Kurt is incredibly close with his father and stepmother.

Pam knows that Blaine calls them ‘mom’ and ‘dad’. She’s used to it. As long as Pam is still Blaine’s mother in his eyes, it is fine.

Still, she wishes that Blaine had called her immediately. Sure, this happened to Kurt and these are Kurt’s parents, so it makes sense, but Pam cares about the boys as well.

“Blaine.”

“Yes, mom?”

“I-” I’m sorry that I wasn’t there for you. I know you think I’m not a great mother. I’m sorry that I gave you the idea that you couldn’t share this with me. I never should have left you like this. I wish I could do things differently. I shouldn’t have taken out my issues with your father on you. I love you. “I....”

“.... mom?” Blaine sounds confused, and rightly so. 

Pam’s blanking and quickly says: “I hope I can help you. If there’s anything I can do-”

“That’s really kind, mom, but there is nothing to do right now.”

He cut her off. Pam feels a tear roll down her face. It is obvious that Blaine wants the conversation to end. And Pam knows it’s partly her fault. If only she’d paid more attention to him when he was in his teens. She envies the relationship between Kurt and his parents. Hell, she envies the relationship between Blaine and Kurt’s parents. She should’ve been the first person to turn to, not them. She can understand Blaine’s reluctance to talk to John, but she wishes she’d never let it come this far between her and Blaine.

“Okay,” she says.

It’d be far too easy to push the blame towards John. She can claim that she was too preoccupied with her failing marriage and that is why she lost touch with what her son wanted and needed from her, but that is the easy way out.

“But, uh, it was nice to hear of you. I’ll keep you up to date.”

“That’d be nice.”

“Alright. Uhm, bye mom. I love you.”

That was never a secret. Pam has always known that Blaine loves her, no matter what. She’s not his father. Blaine loves her, but Pam sometimes feels like it’s undeserving.

“I love you too.”

Jessa and her daughter are still very close. When Pam comes back to the kitchen, she finds Jessa video-calling her daughter.

Pam puts on an old-fashioned kettle and Jessa wraps up her call.

“How do you do that?” Pam asks Jessa without meeting her eyes. Pam fixates her view on the kettle.

“Do what?” Jessa asks.

“Casually call your child to talk about the simplest parts of life.”

Pam is still looking at the kettle, but she feels a hand on her shoulder. Jessa smiles sadly.

“It’s a two-way street, Pamela. We both make effort to talk to each other when we can,” Jessa answers.

“I feel like I missed the turn sign when Blaine was in his teens and how we’re years later, he’s in his thirties, I am on the other side of the world, and now it’s become a one-way street with a lot of twists and turns. He doesn’t reach out to me and I am afraid it is too late, so I just keep driving aimlessly.”

Jesse raises an eyebrow. “Nice extension on my traffic metaphor.”

Pam snorts. “I try to be poetic, but it sounds weird.”

Jessa shakes her head. “No, Pam. It might not be overly poetic, but it makes sense. You can’t say that about most poetry.”

Pam is about to disagree with the poetry statement, but the kettle whistles and Jessa gets the tea.

While doing so, she continues: “But you’re still driving that one-way street, aren’t you? Even when it looks like you’ll never reach the destination, you’re still going. Show him that you’re still going down that road and maybe that will inspire him to jump behind the wheel as well and it will become a two-way street again.”

“I think I’ve had enough of these metaphors for now. And you can’t change traffic laws at will.”

Jessa rolls her eyes and he throws the tea bags towards Pam. Pam laughs in surprise when she fails to catch it.

“Pamela, just take my wisdom! See me as your driving instructor,” Jessa says while smiling.

Pam decides to just go with it. “But how will I show him that I’m, well, that I’m still driving? I want him to reach out to me! If it hadn’t been for that stupid Firmspring post, I wouldn’t have known about this.”

“And why doesn’t he?”

Pam knows the answer. Because she never made herself seem approachable.

Jessa gives her a knowing look. “Exactly. Start by doing something small. It might confuse him in the beginning, but it will work. Trust me.”

Pam starts small. She sends Blaine photos of Cebu City. She gives him recipes of local cuisine. She poses for selfies with Jessa and other friends. One time, she even sends him a photo from a dressing room with the text ‘thoughts on this dress?’.

And despite the time difference, Blaine always replies. In the beginning, they’re short answers like ‘looks nice’ or ‘thanks’ or ‘say hi to Jessa’ or ‘no’, but after a while, he starts messaging her and it’s more that the annual ‘merry Christmas, thanks for the present’ or ‘Happy New Year, mom’ messages that she’s been getting in the last few years. This time, he actually writes about his plans and he occasionally sends silly photos back.

Pam knows that there’s still a lot that he’s not telling her. He barely talks about the whole amnesia situation and sometimes, Blaine’s replies are late, which means he’s too caught up in something else. So it’s not much, but it is a start.

Yes, Pam’s last name is a Dalton Discord reference.