To my mother:

My mom is the best mom, at least for me.  To keep you reading, she’s not perfect.  If she were, I might not like her as much.  I’d certainly be less impressed.  While I am about to gush about her for a moment, she has her flaws. She is human.  I don’t say that to knock her, but it’s even more impressive to me how much I’ve grown to admire her as a parent knowing, and even liking, her imperfections, for the most part.  Every moment of my childhood wasn’t perfect, although luckily, for me, the good certainly outweighed the bad.  But what my mom gave me was a person in this world who seemed to enjoy me endlessly.  For me, that has been truly vital.

Growing up she made life fun—dancing to show tunes in the living room, swimming in the pond at Misquamicut Beach, nightly massages as she listened to every detail of my day which included obnoxiously, exhaustive, extremely comprehensive information.  If I ate my sandwich top down instead of bottom up, she heard about it.  If I went to the bathroom five times or three, she […]