June 30, 2011 ~ Day 202 She's My Sunshine

I'm sitting in our daughter's bedroom watching her try to stuff a wooden train into a water bottle... wondering just how far she'll get with it and if I'll end up needing to operate on the bottle later to release the train back into the wild.

Not long ago, I came upon her in the bathroom cheerily stuffing two full packages of baby wipes, one little wipe at a time, into the toilet. She'd just about filled it to the top and was preparing to flush.

"Hi MOMMEEEE!" she grinned as she stuffed in one final baby wipe. "'Prise!" (Surprise)

Hmmmmmm.... surprise indeed!

Actually, not so surprising.

Our daughter is two years old, and it turns out that her new job is to vacillate between incredible cuteness and extreme naughtiness. She's got the formula worked out very precisely - she always seems to know just how much misbehavior my husband and I will tolerate... without overstepping to the point where we actually get upset.

Right when we're about to get annoyed, she switches on that huge smile and says something adorable or throws her arms around our legs and says "ILUyoo" (I love you)... and of course, we both melt.

It's clear that she has already outwitted us.

Less than a month ago, I spent an entire day and a reasonable amount of money recovering our dining room chairs with new upholstery material. They looked great, almost brand new.

Approximately 26 days later, two of those four chairs have now been 'decorated' in black ballpoint pen, a voluptuous swirling design that reveals the exuberant character of its two year old artist. The fabric has also been splashed with red and brown marker, just for contrast.

Sigh.

Did I mention that the chairs now form a perfect match to the white wall and wood floor near them? That the red ink has also graced my bedspread, cabinets and clothing?

That my daughter's infatuation with art is costing me any semblance of a well-kept house?

Just when I'm about to be truly cross with her, she'll say something like: "Look MOMMEEE, I dwawing! I do pwitty dwawing!!! I dwaw my peeture!" and show me one of her 'creations' on the wall or the floor, reminding me that she is only two years old and doesn't actually understand the need to confine her creativity to a piece of paper or a coloring book.

If only we owned the house, we might actually be able to DO something with her artwork - create entire montages around it. Paint a mural around her scribbles. Instead, every time she points out another masterpiece that she has stealthily made while we were busy cooking dinner or using the bathroom, I kiss a little more of our security deposit goodbye.

Still, our resident graffiti artist is a pretty fantastic character.

Recently our girl has started to sing. She makes up her own melodies, and sometimes tries to imitate her brothers by singing "La-la-la" in melody as her own version of the "A-B-C" song.

Yesterday afternoon right at a moment when I was about to discipline her for throwing her older brother's Luke Skywalker action figure into the toilet, she began to shake her little legs and sing a song to the tune of Twinkle ~ with her own lyrics which we found to be so funny, the entire family began laughing out loud.

"Happeee Happpeee My BUTT-BUTT!" she belted out.

"Um, honey - did you just sing a song about your bottom?" I clarified.

"YISSS!!!!!!!!!!! I DID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" she giggled uproariously. "My butt-butt!!!" Then, just to make sure I really understood, she wiggled her rear.

Her father and brothers could not have been more proud. The little boys went into hysterics for about ten minutes and made her sing her song for them over and over again. "Our sister said BUTT-BUTT!!!" chortled the four year old.

* * * * * *

I'm learning so much about little girls from my daughter, just as I've learned about little boys from my sons.

My daughter teaches me daily that girls are incredibly resilient. She has shown me that they can be fearless and funny, tender and loyal, mischievous and genuinely kind. She has shown me a kind of strength of character that is totally unique, unlike anything I've experienced with our boys.

This child does not know the meaning of backing down. She is inventive and resourceful, pulling up furniture three times her size to reach food of all kinds... especially pretzels. She yanks plants out of the ground for fun and squishes insects. She eats dirt, much to the chagrin of my mother, which gives me joy because I believe it will provide her with a much stronger immune system someday.

She will make eye contact with any stranger and wave, "HI!" and has no compunction about walking straight toward a street or a parking lot. (Not my favorite trait.)

Yet despite all of her independence and audacity, she is also the first child to give me a hug if I stumble and bang into something while carrying groceries. She is the first one to jump on my lap and give me a big kiss on my forehead. Recently, she has even begun articulating in plaintive tones the words that are surely precious to any mother: "I want my mommeeeeeeeeee!"

Yesterday I took my daughter into the pediatrician's office for her annual physical, the good ol' two year old checkup. Lo and behold, our little preemie who entered the world six weeks early at a scanty four lbs plus change... continues to measure in the 97th percentile for height for all children her age. In fact, she is now only a few inches shorter than her four year old brother. "She's in wonderful good health," complimented the doctor. "She's doing great."

What a miracle.

There isn't a day that passes in this house where I don't give thanks at some point for my three children (and probably also throw my hands up to Heaven and wonder how we're going to survive their childhood!). Having a daughter, especially a powerful daughter who is so unlike me in temperament and personality, is one of the sweetest gifts life has ever sent my way.

As I often sing to her, courtesy of The Temptations, she is my Sunshine on a cloudy day.

June 5, 2011 ~ Day 177 Mother and Daughter

Today I went for a walk with my mother along the cliffs where I grew up, holding her hand like a small child. My mother is now in her early 70s and I've managed to stuff 35 years under my own belt.

I'm not sure how it happened that I grew taller than the woman who once seemed to tower over me like some friendly goddess.

I cannot pinpoint a single moment in which she passed her torch to me and my siblings as the vital women and men in our "prime of life" and she began to lead us into a graceful golden age by example.

The whole aging process is as weird for me as it is for her. I don't know quite how or when it happened.

Yesterday as we left her house - the home where she raised me from infancy to adulthood - to go for our walk in the gorgeous June sunshine, Mom remarked, "I don't know how I ended up this vintage, I still feel so young."

"I guess the answer is, you kept putting one foot in front of the other," I laughed.

"That's right," she giggled.

Yet walking forward, I felt a lump growing in my throat. I had to turn my head so that she wouldn't see me getting emotional.

There are no words adequate to express just how much I love my mother, yet I believe that anyone who has a parent that they adore will understand exactly what I mean. I know that not everyone is lucky enough to have a strong bond with one or both of their parents, and in all honesty, I didn't have much of a bond with my Dad (at least not one that I recognized at the time) until he was already well into his years of decline.

Mom though has been an integral part of everything that makes me who I am. Every childhood birthday and slumber party, every high school date, every college exam, every job interview, every new apartment, everything.

She was physically present in the room with me - just she and my husband - holding my hand and praying through my agonizing screams, as I pushed my children out into the world in a mess of blood and other fluid. I don't even want to know the parts of me that they have each seen; just the IDEA of them watching that intense process sort of blows my mind. Yet there they were, weeping with me and beaming and holding those precious little newborn boys. (The girl came by c-section; I was alone; my father had died 22 hours prior. More on that later this week...)

I cannot imagine a world without my mother, one in which I am an orphan and there is no longer a single person on the planet who loves me unconditionally. I am so deeply thankful for my siblings, husband and children - for my wealth of amazing friends; I live such a blessed life but nothing - NOTHING - can replace my mother.

Yesterday as we walked together I couldn't help but notice the changes that time has wrought in that beloved lady. Just as I continue to think of myself as only slightly more than seventeen years old I have crystallized my mother in my own memory somewhere around the age of 47, when I was ten.

When I think of her I picture jet black hair flowing down her back, those high defined cheekbones, a sweetheart mouth and incredibly warm embrace - coupled with ice cold hands. I remember how calming her cold hands were to me as a small child, as she would place her palm upon my forehead to check for a fever or to smooth my tousled head. (I'd never heard of poor circulation back then...)

It has been really hard for me to accept that she won't be here forever. I don't honestly know how I'll cope.

Yesterday after we walked I sat in the front from of her beautiful house where I grew up, and I realized that the day will come when I can no longer enter through its front door as I please - a day will come when neither the door nor the house belong to our family. That is the strangest thing I can imagine; given that my own parents moved into the house just months before my birth. Going on 36 years now - the entirety of my existence - it has been the veritable seat of our family tribe.

What will it be like someday when I drive down along those cliffs and pass my "old" street, without being able to stop in? Will I knock on that thick wooden door years from now to the answer of strangers, asking if I can please show my children or grandchildren the interior of the home where I grew up?

It's hard to wrap my head around.

I said something in that vein to my mother yesterday, something like - "It will be weird when we don't have this house anymore," with all of the subtle implications that accompany such a statement.

My mother nodded and then said philosophically, "Well, it's just a house."

"I know what you mean - it's the people in the house that make it special," I agreed.

The uncomfortable, unacknowledged bit in my sentence stuck jaggedly in my throat. When my mother is no longer in the house, it will no longer be our home. My mother is what makes the house special, now that my father is gone. When she passes on, it will become merely a house.

I hugged her very hard when I left for the day. "See you soon!" I promised, and my words were more like a command or a demand or an entreaty to the Universe. (Please let me see my mother again soon!)

Late last night, I awakened in pitch black to the crying of a child. Our three children share the same bedroom so I peeked my head into their doorway to see who was restless or unhappy. As it turned out, our nearly two year old daughter was fussing - standing next to the bed of her nearly four year old brother. Actually she was crying her head off and trying to wake him up. Given that it was three in the morning, I decided to whisk her out of there before she roused the entire house.

Swiftly I entered their room, picked up my little girl, and brought her into our third bedroom so that both my husband and our sons could try to sleep. Holding her in the third room, I sang to her until I felt her tense little body shudder and then relax into mine - finally accepting sleep now that she was enfolded in the comforting scent of her mother.

"It's okay, baby girl," I soothed her in the darkness. "Did you have a bad dream? You're okay." Her warm little body tucked into its footsie pajamas snuggled against me and I inhaled the scent of her baby shampoo. We began to fall back to sleep.

Just then I realized something; remembered something that my mother told me years ago. "By the time I leave this Earth," she'd said, "You will be married with a family of your own. You may even have a daughter."

Yesterday in the dark night holding my tiny daughter and feeling powerfully connected to her, it struck me for the first time that perhaps someday she and I *will* share the same kind of profound love and friendship that I share with my own mother. Perhaps she and her brothers are the gifts that Life has generously shared to assuage my grief over the loss (past and future) of my own parents.

As if reading my mind at that moment, my daughter murmured "Mama"... just before she began to snore gently.

Perhaps many years from now my daughter and I will talk and walk along the seaside cliffs, and she will reach for my hand just as I have reached for the hand of my mother throughout all of these precious years. It is a comforting thought.

May 14, 2011 ~ Day 155 Priority Check

The kids and I had just entered our house (well, I entered... they swarmed) when the telephone rang.

“I wonder if that’s your Mima?” I said aloud, “She must be waiting for her next flight.”

When I'd spoken to my mother yesterday evening at 9:15pm she could not have been more excited. “By tomorrow at this time, I’ll be in Barcelona!” she veritably glowed. She and a close girlfriend would be adventuring throughout the Costa Brava over the coming week and this would be my mother’s first trip to Spain - not to mention her first time in Europe since the death of my father two years ago.

These past few months have been a joyous time of preparation for my mother - buying travel guides and language CDs, exchanging money for Euros, putting together the perfect traveling clothes, poring over maps and watching Spanish language films. She’s been luminous with the joyful anticipation of it all.

I, of course, have felt anxious. As previously noted in this blog - I hate it when people I love are flying. The mere thought of airplane flight makes my heart race a bit. Realizing how selfish it was for me to waste my mother’s positive energy by expressing a deep-seated worry for her safety, I ‘buttoned my lip’ and told her just how thrilled I was for her journey. I meant it. Nobody in the world deserves a bit of sunshine and adventure more than my mother.

(I’m sure that countless folk deserve these good things just as much... but no-one could deserve them more.)

Before I left to pick up my eldest son from kindergarten this afternoon, I went onto the online airline flight status checker to see if my mother’s flight had arrived safely in New York City. Relieved, I saw that it had landed about forty minutes earlier -- even a few minutes ahead of schedule.

“Oh good!” I thought. “She’ll have more time to make her connecting flight to Barcelona.” Smiling at the visual of my mother sitting on the plane that would take her overseas to fulfill her recent dreams, I herded my two younger children into the car and went to pick up their big brother.

We were just walking through the door, then, when the telephone rang.

Happily, I picked up expecting to hear my mother’s beautiful voice. At the last second I glanced at caller ID and saw that it was my older sister.

“Hi there!” I answered. “How are you?”

“Honey,” she replied. “I have bad news. Our mother is not doing well...”

Before she could say more, my heart stopped for a second. Isn’t this the call that everyone in the world dreads the most? The call which tells them that unexpectedly - out of nowhere, even - someone they love has fallen ill, gotten hurt, or worse.

Without meaning to, I clenched my teeth and gripped the telephone much harder.

“What?!! Where is she? What happened?”

I don’t think it would be appropriate to share further details of my mother’s terrible day here. That story is hers and it doesn’t seem like my place to tell it. Suffice to say that she has had just about the worst day that one might imagine for a warm-hearted woman in her seventies who had planned to meet a dear friend out of the country for an adventure but ended up instead exceptionally ill in an airport all alone, three thousand miles from home.

Since getting that first call from my sister, the rest of my day (all 8 hours of it) has pretty much blurred together. I’ve felt so incredibly helpless to do anything at all for my mother, the precious person who has done the most for me in my life. Gosh, even more than that - she *gave* me my life, and risked her own to bring me into the world.

The thought - fleeting though it was - that I could lose her so suddenly and in such a way... truly rocked my balance as a wife, mother and human being today.

I realized that one day I *will* receive that kind of call about my mother. The day will come when this angel in my life is no longer physically present to nurture me in the hundreds of ways that she continues to do... ways as large as caring for my children while my husband and I go on dates, all the way down to the small thoughtful gestures that she performs unasked all of the time - buying us groceries, doing our dishes, folding laundry with me, going out of her way to cook gluten free food for me without ever making a big deal of it. She has been a rock in my life for so long - 35 years - and someday, she will be gone.

And when that day comes, I will be an orphan of sorts. If you’re an adult when your parents pass away, are you still an orphan? I’m not sure how that works. In any event, I will have lost both of my parents.

Parents are the only people on this planet that will ever love you unconditionally. That’s just how strong the love of a parent is for their child. The love of a husband and wife is different. There are conditions. The conditions say something like:

“I promise to love you forever and be faithful to you in all ways - and to try to treat you with respect... but NOT if you cheat on me, NOT if you ignore or abuse me, NOT if we fall out of love or find that we’ve grown tired of each other after twenty years or so. I also probably won’t love you as much if you commit a felony or do something heinous that hurts other people physically or emotionally.”

The love of a parent is a whole different ballgame.

When a mother looks at her small baby she thinks, “I will love you from this moment before your actual birth all the way until the moment I take my last breath. I will love you no matter what you do to me or how many terrible things you say to me when you are an angry teenager. I will love you whether you call me once a week or once a year. I will love you even if you embezzle money or commit heinous deeds. I will love you because I am your mother and you are my child.”

My husband and I reflected tonight, on the couch after we’d put the kids to bed, about this amazing love that parents have for children... and which children don’t necessarily return, at least not until they are adults.

“You only realize,” he commented, “Just how amazing your parents are and how important they are to you - when you become a parent and have children of your own. Then it all becomes clear; the sacrifices they have made to make your life what it became.”

“If only I had been a better kid,” I mourned. “I would give anything to go back in time just for one day - twenty years ago before my dad got sick, when both of my parents were still pretty young, strong and beautiful - and spend a whole day just in their company, talking and doing things together.

When I was younger,” I continued, “I only wanted to get away from my folks. I wanted to be with my friends, my boyfriend. I wanted to go to parties and to the beach, to work at my job and do as much as I could to feel independent of my home. Now that I’m an adult, I realize how much time I wasted that I could have spent with two of the most important people in my life.”

“I think that’s pretty normal,” he responded. “I didn’t appreciate my parents fully until we had our first son. And you know what? Our karma is going to be that we’re going to have to go through all of this too, with our own kids. They will pull away from us, not appreciate all that we do for them, give us a run for our money just like we did with our own parents.

That is the cycle of life,” he added. “We get the true payback for what we did to our own parents when it comes back to us through our own children.”

“Oh no,” I groaned. “I’m not sure I can handle that kind of payback. I was a pretty tough kid.”

“We’ll get through it,” he laughed. “At least we’ve got each other.”

* * * * *

My mother is now safely in the care of my elder brother, resting at his New York City home. I could not be more grateful that he was in town - that he had the time - that he could rush to get to the airport to be with her and transport her to a safe and beautiful environment in which to recuperate.

I have great confidence that she is going to be fine this time around, that in a week or so I’ll be giving her a big hug and welcoming her back to our city and her home.

This experience has given me much pause for thought though, about how critical time is right now and how important it is to me to spend more of it with her. I love my mother. I will miss her profoundly, when we are forever parted some day. I hope that day is a long, long time coming.

Until then, I plan to be a better daughter - and, if my prayers are answered, to need less from her while giving her more joy (and lots of love) so that she spends these years as happily and joyfully as possible.

April 16, 2011 ~ Day 128 Mommy's Little Angel

Yesterday afternoon I put my daughter down for a nap. About an hour later I happened to be passing through the hallway near to her room and heard stirrings. "Wow, I guess she's up already," I thought, and went to get her.

To my surprise when I came into her room, she was seated in the middle of a sea of now-opened colorful plastic eggs which had been given to her elder brothers by their grandmother a week ago. She had cracked open nearly every egg and the floor around her was littered with silver foil wrappers. Apparently she had known something that I did not... these eggs contained chocolate and peppermint candies.

"Oh honey," I exclaimed. "Did you eat all of your brothers' Easter candy from grandma?"

She giggled and gave me a big, chocolatey grin.

I bent down and began to put the plastic egg shells back into the bag from whence they'd come, counting wrappers as I went. All told, I counted twelve.

"Sweet girl," I sighed. "Did you really just eat twelve chocolate candies?"

Just then her biggest brother came into the room, took one look at the mess on the ground, and began to cry.

"Can you please tell your brother that you're sorry you ate all of his special candy?"

She looked us both right in the eye and grinned. "Nope."

Thinking she might not have understood me, I asked again. "Honey, please say sorry."

"Nope." She giggled uproariously.

Hmmmmmmm......

So this is Life with Sister lately and as adorable as she is, I think our road is wending uphill.


My daughter is 23 months old, just about ready to hit the twos. With the sons, the twos were actually very easy compared to the threes and fours. However, I think little girls may be different. I know for a fact that girls acquire language in two parts of the brain while boys acquire it in only one part; so maybe she's just a little precocious.

One way or another, it looks like her special variety of TWO is about to take our breath away.

Within the last week or two, she has figured out that if you drag a chair or stepstool over to a high surface (e.g. counter top, mantle, bookcase, dresser) you can double your own height and ability to reach dangerous things.

This has led us to such delightful moments as disarming her from both a pair of scissors and a steak knife (cutting block has been moved and is now well hidden from her view and reach), retrieving her Daddy's eye drops quickly before she drank them, rescuing her from the lid of the grand piano where she'd been trying to reach a toy, and perhaps more than anything discovering her (almost daily) mid-theft with sizable quantities of food in her grubby little palms. Lots and lots of sneaky snacks. The girl is clearly led by her stomach. She could probably eat eight meals a day.

She's also begun to copy some of her brothers' less desirable moves... like hitting them when she is angry. Or shoving them back when they hurt her.

I'm working hard to curtail this behavior in all of the children, but I have to admit that when it comes to her, there is a small part of me very proud and glad that she's no "mild-mannered wallflower" as my mother would say. Far from it!

This delicate, once-premature daughter sees nothing wrong with standing up for herself around the guys, whether with her words or her fists. I prefer words but, given all of the bad things that have the potential to befall women in their lives, I want to raise a female that is fearless and strong, willing and able to defend herself if or when the need ever arises. So, while it is crucial that we teach her how to resolve problems through communication and nonviolent action... I want her to know that sometimes nice girls DO fight back.

Whenever my mother or sister see her they say she is a mini-me. I don't see it, I think she looks just like her dad's side of the family. Either way, she is elfishly cute but very sturdy, with the most adorable pot belly. She's extremely tall for her age (95th percentile at last check) with wispy curling hair and a 100watt smile.

As her personality continues to emerge, I find myself loving her even more than I already did.

It's easy to feel a surge of warmth and affection for a precious, vulnerable little baby. She's always been a sweet thing, and especially with her rough start into the world my husband and I have always harbored a very soft spot for her in our hearts.

However she's grown a lot in the last two years and I find that this spunky little girl is really lighting me up with her intelligent, enthusiastic, loving, naughty ways. She'll comfort any owie... "Mama, ooo OK? Mama OK. Mama OK," and runs to give hugs and kisses to the injured. She's becoming a dedicated artist and will sit with crayons for hours quietly working on paper after paper.

She routinely eats dirt in the back yard, sand at the beach, and any other mineral-filled item she can source from the yard or house when we're not looking.

She carries her "babies" around the house and has taken to cuddling with one particular blue blanket, something her brothers never did. She tries to help clean and cook and is constantly underfoot whenever I am in the kitchen, wanting to participate. I'm really hoping to get her a play kitchen for her 2nd birthday, she seems much more into domestic play than her brothers were.

If we come upon a group of adults when entering or exiting our car in a parking lot, walking into a store, waiting to pick up my son from school - anywhere - she will make eye contact with one of them, smile hugely, wave and say "Hi!" until they smile back and talk to her. She announces her presence wherever she goes.

All in all, having a daughter is putting a totally new spin on parenting - or at least a unique variation on the theme.

I want the best in life for all of my children. By this I mean, I want them to grow up stable, balanced, self-reliant human beings who can take care of themselves and find joy in the process. My hopes for them are vast, but not in a materialistic way. I hope that they will be healthy, capable of loving and receiving love, responsible, kind, compassionate, humble and honest. I pray that my children grow to have integrity, and that they live according to the philosophy that all people everywhere are born equal and deserving of respect.

There are just a few things though that I want for my daughter, which differ from my hopes for the boys.

Whether she turns out to be a tomboy or a frilly little princess or some wonderful cross between the two, I hope that my daughter will learn how to communicate clearly and warmly - even confidently. Women need to be able to speak for themselves in this world, and to speak for other women and children who cannot.

I hope she'll inherit my mother's fiscal sensibility, my grandmother's work ethic, my husband's mother's genius in the kitchen, my sister's love of crafts, my other grandmother's love of music. I hope she'll inherit my own lust for life.

I pray that she becomes a good and caring friend - loyal and reliable - someone that reaches out to others and is there for them. I pray this because I want her to benefit from the deep joy of friendship between women, which is one of life's greatest treasures. There are a few women I've come across in my lifetime that for whatever reason, other women don't like so much... a woman who would actively go after another man's husband, for example. It would make me very sad if my daughter ended up scorned by other women, deprived of their nurturing, loyalty and love.

I've benefited too much in the last 35 years from my profound relationships with other women not to wish that joy for my own daughter. I love my husband vastly but he doesn't fill the place in my heart uniquely reserved for the friends who have laughed, danced, cooked, traveled, chatted, inspired, supported, connected with and comforted me throughout most of my life.

There is a special role that only women can fill in another woman's life. I think my Mother's group leader hit it on the head yesterday when she asked a room full of 45 women from their early 20s to late 60s "Who here wishes they had someone to mother them?" Nearly every hand in the room went up!

Women uniquely nurture other women in a way that is not instinctive to men. It isn't better, it's just different. I hope she will get the chance to experience real friendship and camaraderie with other women.

People tell me that one day, my daughter and I will be the best of friends. I don't know if this is true, and I don't think it is fair for anyone to place that kind of expectation on her. So far my daughter evidences a strong attachment to her daddy, and I think that's pretty wonderful. She's lucky to have a gentle, loyal, loving father to look up to - and he's lucky to have such a sparkly, affectionate little girl.

Whether we end up the kind of mom and daughter that spend a lot of time together or she ends up calling me once a year on Christmas, I am so proud of my daughter! She has a strong, independent spirit and a mouth full of chocolate. May life in all of its unpredictability keep her zesty spirit and innate kindness intact.

The world can use a vibrant, welcoming personality like hers.

January 22, 2011 ~ Day 44 The Most Beautiful Woman In The World

I felt a surge of excitement as I kissed my three precious children and my husband good night and headed out into the cool darkness. I was late for a date with the most incredible woman in the world - my mother.

Since my father passed away in June 2009, I have taken very seriously the importance of spending quality time with my mother. I wish I could say that I have been strong for her since his death, but in reality she has been strong for me. When I look back upon June 2009 through August 2010, my immediate and overwhelming impression is of juggling three children - including a premature newborn, stress and autoimmunity. During that time, my mother was for me (as she has always been) a rock of kindness, generosity, love and compassion.

She is the mother who makes all of my sincere attempts at excellent mothering look, well, feeble.

Despite my many failings as a daughter, my mother still manages to overlook my self-centered, exhausted monologues about how challenging it is for me to be a mother and how I don't know how she managed to make the job look so easy. She continues to give me unconditional love as only a parent can... seeing in me all of the promise of my past and all the potential of my future. She expresses pride in my life choices, which is especially gracious considering how stridently my former teenage self frequently vocalized opposition to her chosen role in life - homemaker and writer.

"I will NEVER turn out like my mother. I will NEVER be a financially dependent, stay-at-home wife and mother! No house frau for me!!!" (Me, age 17-21)

How my mother must have chuckled quietly when I ate those words with a big slice of humility a decade later. To her credit, she has never yet uttered the words "See, being like me isn't so bad..."

My mother is so much more than just a homemaker. She is the strongest woman I know, always there to lend an ear or a hand to her friends, family and even folks she has never met. She is a gifted artist ~ the woman beads jewelry so elegant it is sold in local stores; she embroiders, sews, sings, paints in oils and ~ before becoming a mother ~ she acted and modeled for almost 20 years in Hollywood.

She is the woman who will singlehandedly paint and wallpaper a bedroom by herself, at age 70+, because she likes working hard and "It beats aging". She is the matriarch that wove our Yours-Mine-Ours family together to the point that my father's sons, who were both adults when our parents married 36 years ago, now call her mother and mom and truly think of her that way.

Mom is the verbal 'heavy hitter' of the family that we unleash upon insurance companies trying to deny payment for medical claims and all other bureaucratic nightmares. She handles them with such grace and savoir faire! Mom always reminds us that "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar" but wow, can she pour on the respectful vinegar when it's needed. She is one heck of a strong woman, especially when defending her family. A tigress!

I am really nothing like my mother. She actually reminds me much more of my husband. She is calm, laid-back, confident, connected to the world and full of faith. I take after my cerebral, anxious dad. Mom has always been the force of reason and optimism propelling our family unit forward into gratitude and peace.

We are all human though, and there are a few things that have been a few decisions my mom has made over the years that were bitter pills for me to swallow. For the first four years of my oldest son's life she wasn't around much as a grandmother, due to the highly understandable fact that she was busy caring for my dying father as he declined rapidly from Alzheimer's.

In the few moments of free time she had to unwind from his very intense need for high-level care, mom wasn't that excited about spending time with my often-fussy toddler and infant sons. "I have been a wife, mother and grandmother for over 50 years," she told me candidly. "It's important to me to spend at least some of the time I have left learning and growing; writing, traveling and doing a few fulfilling things for myself."

I understood this, and still do. Still, I would have loved my own children to benefit from the incredible mothering and grandmothering ability my mom possesses. Since my dad's death though, she has been a lot more available to us as a grandmother, which I really appreciate. My kids adore her.

The most difficult time I have ever had with my mother came when she agreed to move my father out of our family home and into 24 hour nursing care. There were a million reasons to do so and his physicians were pushing her.

For months and even years, my father had stopped sleeping through the night ~ and would wake up and do strange, potentially dangerous things while she was sleeping. He hallucinated and fought with imaginary creatures. There were lots of messes to clean up, messes of all kinds. He needed help using the bathroom, dressing, eating. He jumbled his words and sometimes made no sense at all. Taking care of him alone was horribly debilitating and at times my siblings and I wondered if we would lose mom before we lost dad.

Despite this, I was crushed beyond belief when my father was moved permanently out of his home. My mother had been told by his physicians that once out, he could never return to the house without it causing tremendous pain and psychological hardship for all involved. I don't know what I think or feel about this, but it was the advice she received from his neurologist.

My bewildered, cantankerous, lost father left his home one day to go to the doctor's office, ended up briefly hospitalized and then sent to assisted living. He never returned. He literally never saw his home again. Thinking about this continues to break my heart a little. Dad spent the next year or so in two group homes, where I visited him almost every day with my sons until I was placed on bed rest with my last pregnancy. My mother also visited him daily, spending most of her day with him each time.

At the time I was so angry with my mother for agreeing to move my dad away from the house he had worked two jobs to afford, away from the ocean view of which he (a Nebraska farm boy) was so proud. I was so angry in fact, that I boycotted Christmas that year. "If Dad can't come home for Christmas, I'm not going to be there either." We spent Christmas that year with my brothers at their hotel near Dad's new home.

Despite my frustration with the situation though, I always remained close with my mother. She, my brother and I were a team sharing the most intense experience possible, the protracted loss of someone we all loved deeply.

Eventually my father passed, which is another story for another time. Since his death almost 20 months ago, it has been a genuine joy to watch my mother's health - physically and emotionally - spring back into full blossom. She is a superwoman once again. She is the same vibrant, gorgeous soul that my father first fell in love with. I love any chance I get to spend time in her company, to benefit from her wisdom and also her absolute sweetness. She is teaching me by example how to age with spirit and zest.

Yesterday evening, I spent a wonderful four hours with my mother... cooking, chatting and watching a chick-flick, just as we might have done when I was growing up. I love our conversations which range from the philosophical ("What do you think happens after we die, Mom?") to the practical ("When did you start getting grey hair?").

Now that I am an adult and a mother, my mom often surprises me with anecdotes from her youth and acting career. She has stories about the time when she was briefly a Vegas showgirl running with a crowd that included the likes of Sammy Davis Jr. or about her best friend who married David Wolper, the creator of television sagas like Roots and The Thorn Birds. There seems always to be something new to learn about my mother's unusual life, and I never fail to be amazed and delighted.

At the end of the evening, my mother sat quietly at the counter while I finished clearing up the dinner dishes. Out of nowhere she spoke. "I only wish," she said, "That your father had been able to stay in this house. I don't know though. I loved him so much ~ I think it would have killed me to watch him die here."

Like a burst of light illuminating some dark recessed part of my heart, I finally understood - fully - why my mother had not fought to keep Dad at home. The many years of caring for him physically and emotionally had at the time made her fragile, vulnerable. Now that she has returned to full strength, it is easy to see the toll his sickness had taken.

Looking over at my mother with her soft brown hair and sparkling eyes sitting at the counter and staring into the void beyond me, I realized that having her still HERE, NOW is the most crucial thing. I am so grateful that mom *didn't* become one of the many caregivers who are outlived by their patients. On the spot I finally forgave her, 2000%. My mother is human. I love my mother.

Having a mother and being a mother. Arguably the two most important things that have ever happened to me. I am grateful for every moment and every conversation we have left.