For my mommy...

I was 6 when I opened my lunch and found a gummy smurf candy next to my sandwich and fruit. I knew it was from my mom and I loved it. It made my day.

I was 10 when I found out I was the kid with the "cool" mom. You know, the one that other kids always envied and wished was their own. My friends were all plotting how they could convince their moms to let them get their ears "double-pierced" and I didn't have to plot. My mom was the one with the double piercing, and she already asked if I wanted to do the same...I was chicken and said, "no."

I was 11 when I understood how difficult it must have been for my mom to be there for us while handling a full-time job. She took an odd job where she worked from midnight to noon just so she could be there to pick us up from school each day and spend the afternoons with us, when I know she probably just wanted to lay down in bed and snooze.

I was 13 when I was most hard on my mom...Well, I was a teenager. I was a hormonal, moody, teenager who slammed doors and thought that all rules were for sadistic purposes. Yet she was the one who was always there, talking things out with me, putting up with my emotional outbursts, and trying to reason with me when I was completely irrational. Being an unreasonable teenager I didn't take her words as seriously as I should have.

I was 17 when I had an epiphany and realized my mom was right. I was also living in a dorm, in a college, 110 miles away...I spent a lot of time on the phone calling home that year.

I was 20 when I figured out what a wonderful mother-daughter relationship we had when I read my 20th birthday card from her...I remember the vivid honesty in her words and I just cried when I read it. That was when I learned that a mom can also be one of your best friends.

I was 28 when I realized just how much my mom loved me. Holding my own daughter in my arms I learned all too quickly how tough it is being a mom...how often moms are taken for granted...how sacrifice is an everyday thing...how changing diapers and cleaning spit up is only the beginning of a lifelong process...how much patience is necessary...how dramatically life-altering it is...yet, moms do it all out of love and nothing more...

Thank you, mom. I love you, too.



Happy Mother's Day.