Happy Mother's Day

Today, I sat in Chemistry class, ignoring the assignment I should have been doing, and I overheard a conversation between two classmates, Pepper and Kay. Pepper's mother died in a car wreck recently, over spring break, and they were having a conversation about Kay's mom. One comment Kay made was, "My mom needs to be shot in the head." Pepper proceeded to, surprisingly calmly, tell her to enjoy arguing while she could, because she had no idea how much she'd miss fighting with her mom when she can't. Kay continued complaining about her mother, and all I wanted to do was turn around and say, "I think that was a polite way of telling you to consider yourself lucky that you have a mom and shut up."

I love my mom very, very much. We are alike in so many ways, and yet very different.

My mom is so beautiful. She is about 45, but she looks so much younger than any of my friends' moms, and some of them are still in their 30s.

I remember that one time I told her that she was a bad mother. I told her that every time I was mad at her for weeks, and then I saw her cry. I felt so horrible, and I started thinking about how I would feel if I worked as hard as my mother does and did all the nice things my mom does, and made Halloween costumes for all of my children every year and was an expert cinnamon toast maker, and my daughter told me that I was a bad mother.

I will never say another hurtful thing to my mother again.

She has done a phenomenal job of raising her daughters. I have seen girls come into the world warped. Girls are easily spoiled, give away their bodies without much thought, reject men altogether, are unconfident and easily hurt, or use every opportunity to hurt whoever they can. Neither my siblings nor I do that. Better yet, none of us were cheerleaders. (No offense to any cheerleaders or ex-cheerleaders out there, but around here, cheerleading is a bad, bad thing for one's moral capacity.)

My mom will never read this, but:

I love you, Mom! Thank you for being awesome in oh-so-many ways!

<3 o.