With Mother’s day approaching I’ve been thinking how lucky I am to still have my Mom. She’s 81 years old and as crazy as anyone I know. We’re very close although to listen to us you probably wouldn’t think so. We give each other so much crap over almost everything. She would say it’s me, but I’m here to tell you, she doesn’t take anything off me. We can be yelling at each other one minute, telling each other “quit yelling at me!” and literally gut laughing the next.

I’ve not always made good choices, but she and my Dad never failed to pick me up when I was down, support me, do whatever it took to make sure I was okay. This isn’t to say we had a perfect family by any means. Ours had it’s share of dysfunction, as all families do, and a lot of it was stuff that had been handed down from generation to generation as is the norm, unfortunately. When I got divorced 18 years ago I had spent a few years in therapy and learned a lot about myself, my family history and how things are carried down without people even knowing they do it. That said, any time I talked to my Mom about it, she listened. Sometimes she agreed and sometimes not but she always listened. I learned to quit blaming her for a lot of things and in the process of all of that we became friends. She became my best friend.

In a lot of ways she taught me how to be the mother I am to my boys. I stand by them no matter what, I support them no matter what, they can always come home, no matter what and I love them beyond what I could have ever imagined, no matter what. That’s the love I was shown my entire life by both my Mom and Dad and I hope when my kids have kids, they will pass it on as well.

It is not lost on me how lucky I am and even though I know I take it for granted at times, I am grateful every single day for my Mom. Even through the new TV, (Haha!) the computer issues, the occasional yelling, the arguments over whether it’s the weather making her bones hurt, the fact that she doesn’t pay attention sometimes (she even admits this), and all of the other little ways we irritate each other, I know that there will always be a belly laugh to follow up…because that’s how we do things.

I love you Mom. Happy Mother’s Day.