The first thing you should know about my mom is that she (probably) won’t even be mad at me for not writing about her until now. She thinks it’s great she can read me anytime she wants…because she’s the kind of mom who always asks to see the papers I’ve written whenever I’m in school. You see where I’m going with this?
I’m mighty thankful I am no longer a teenager for many reasons. The first and most important is, of course, my eighth grade haircut. Coming in at a very close second, however, is the fact that I can really enjoy my mom now. It is one of the great tragedies of my life that this enjoyment and the feeling of closeness to her came after I moved three thousand miles away. I frequently stop in the middle of my day and wonder “What the hell am I doing so far away from home? I miss my mom.” My sister is home for the summer right now and I have to say I’m jealous.
I love my mom, ragazzi. I love it that she gets to raise chickens for her school. I love it that when I ask how she’s doing, she talks about her garden. If you have seen her garden, of course, then you know that it’s not a bad way to describe her, really: it is lush and open and yet somehow very ladylike. I love it that she has up and decided to go to Paris this summer. I love when she makes me spinach lasagna. I love it that she looks very cute in flippy skirts. I love it that her preferred manicure place is on the stripper-riffic Biscayne Boulevard and that her co-customers are usually in drag. (She says she goes there because the nail ladies are real professionals and also “It’s a slice of life.”) I love it that every single on of my friends who has met her loves her too. I love that she flew out to California to help me move into my first apartment. I love that when she was here for graduation last summer, she picked roses every morning and put them in sneaky places all over the house. I love that she grew up on a farm and went to a one-room schoolhouse until she was in sixth grade. I love that she paints at least one room in her house a different color at least once a month. One of my most favorite things in the world is just to futz around with her and do errands and go to lunch and maybe stop at the library.
I know my mom feels as though she’s made some bad choices in her life, and certainly I wouldn’t make some of the ones she’s made, knowing what we all know now. We fought quite a bit when I was in high school, and I know I hurt her terribly. I think she was surprised to all of a sudden be living as a single mom in suburbia and having kids in private school, one of whom, i.e., me, was all of a sudden an evangelical Christian. I remember she used to laugh outright at the society moms who would call asking for donations to the school building fund or whatever. She worried about me sometimes then, I think, and I imagine she does now too, but she is incredibly supportive and encouraging and is always telling me (about my horrible non-job non-situation) that everything will be okay, everything will be all right. I really believe her when she says that. I don’t think I’ll ever be as strong as she is, now or when I was a kid. It’s a good goal though.
I used to wonder, what if you have a kid, and you just don’t like her or him? You love your kid and everything because it’s your kid, but if you met at a party you wouldn’t get along. I think I know some families like that. I’m so glad my mom turned out to be my mom, you know? I feel like I done good in the Mom Lottery or however these things get decided. She’s my mom. I’m her daughter. It’s worked out rather nicely.