55 Memories of Mom

Today is my mom’s 55th birthday! (I think she’d be okay with me telling on her age, heh.) Most of you know how close I am to my mom and how much our relationship means to me. She’s my best friend in every sense of the word—but she’s first and foremost my mom. The one who birthed me and nurtured me and taught me all of the life lessons I hold with me today. Because of this milestone birthday (I told her she’s finally ready to be a Golden Girl!), I thought I’d take a trip down memory lane. I gave myself the ostentatious goal of writing about 55 different memories because I’m just that crazy. 🙂 Enjoy!

1) Our weekly trips to the library to pick up books. We’d immediately split up—me to the children’s or teen’s section and her to the adult section.

2) Fighting during vacation. We always seem to have one massive blowup during each vacation. It usually entails me storming off and giving her the silent treatment until I just can’t handle it anymore. The fights never last very long and they seem like tradition now.

3) Picking me up from the dorm every weekend. I hated living on campus in a dorm (this was before I knew about being an HSP and an introvert—now I know why dorm life was so traumatic for me!) Mom would make the 45-minute drive to pick me up every Friday evening so I could spend the weekend at home, and then drop me back off on Sunday evenings.

4) Our first cruise together. We laugh about it because our first meal was very disappointing and we were both like, “This is going to be AWFUL.” And then we figured out where the good food was and now can’t get enough of cruising! (Well, pre-COVID. Who knows when we’ll take a cruise again!)

5) Her wedding to Robert. It was perfect and sweet and everything we could have hoped for. I’m so glad she found him! He’s so good for her.

6) Regular Facetime calls. This is something we started doing early in the pandemic when I was quarantining from everyone and we continue them to this day. My heart always leaps with joy when I see she’s Facetiming me!

7) Her love for Christmas, which stoked a love of Christmas for my brother and me. She would always try to give us a “good” Christmas, even when money was extremely tight.

8) How calm and stable she was during all the meltdowns I had while in Ireland. She kept me grounded when I wanted to curl up into a ball on the sidewalk and bawl.

9) Speaking of Ireland, experiencing our first international trip together was perfection. There’s nobody else I would have wanted to do it with! From the long flight to our first train rides to seeing the sights, it’s a memory I’ll keep with me for a lifetime.

10) How happy I would feel whenever I came back home after a weekend at my dad’s. I always felt anxious when I was away from her (although, let’s be honest, she probably enjoyed the solitude!) and loved coming home to her.

11) Shopping dates at Target that always ended with a Three Musketeers bar and Coke.

12) “Timed test!” My mom went back to school when my brother and I were preteens, and if we tried to interrupt her while she was taking a timed test, she would frantically shoo us out of the room with this statement. So now, of course, we remind her of this all the time like the loving children we are.

13) Pops’ funeral. As we stood over his casket after it had been lowered into the ground, I stood there sobbing, harder than I’ve ever cried in my life. Even in her own grief at losing her only living parent, Mom held me and told me over and over again how much he loved me.

14) Divorce. I was 11 years old and in fifth grade when my mom sat me down to tell me she was leaving my dad and we were moving in with my grandparents. It was a relief, honestly. Their marriage was volatile and I was ready to be out from that environment.

15) Dropping us off. Growing up, we had a lot of embarrassing cars so my brother and I would kindly ask if my mom could drop us off blocks away from church or school, so our friends wouldn’t see our car. What brats we were! But Mom did it.

16) Family game nights. Mom started these with my brother and me when we were young teens as a way to stay connected and two decades later, we’re still doing them.

17) Watching Jeopardy. We’d play along and whoever ended up with the most money at the end of the game wouldn’t have to do the dishes that night.

18) So many road trips. To Georgia, to cruise ports, to vacations.

19) Our intense love for Dr. Pepper. #igetitfrommymama

20) Doing Weight Watchers together and spending most of the meeting making snide comments about the other members. (We’re judgmental like whoa.)

21) Supportive check-ins. The day Elizabeth Warren dropped out of the presidential race, my mom made sure to check in on me and see how I was doing. She’s not a liberal Democrat like I am, but she still supports me in every way.

22) Supportive check-ins II. My mom always asks me about my therapy appointments. Not in a “tell me everything you talked about!” way, but just to show she cares and supports my mental health journey.

23) Never bad-mouthing my dad. I think my mom could write a book on how to be a single parent that raises healthy, well-adjusted kids. One thing she never did was bad-mouth my dad. She had every right to, but she kept her lips zipped. She wanted nothing more than for us to have a good relationship with him, even though I am sure it killed her to keep quiet.

24) A surprise bridal shower! Her coworkers threw her a surprise party for her upcoming wedding and invited me to it. Watching the surprise on her face when she saw all of us was EVERYTHING!

25) A surprise bedroom set. When I was 18, I wanted nothing more than to upgrade from my twin mattress, but we didn’t have the kind of money to do that. And then she surprised me with a hand-me-down bedroom set (which she could have totally kept for herself, but she chose to give it to me). It was such a special surprise!

26) Her signature. I could never, ever copy her signature. She has this really fancy way of looping the L in her first name, and to this day, I cannot figure it out.

27) Caretaking. She took such great care of Pops after Grandma died. She was his rock, helping him get to doctor’s appointments and just being there for him in his grief.

28) The way I never feel fully at ease unless I’m with her. I’m still waiting to find that level of “home” with a partner.

29) How she laughed and laughed and laughed when I fell down the stairs and broke my ankle during our last cruise. She will never live that down! (She wasn’t laughing at me, but she just got the case of the giggles and couldn’t stop!)

30) Annnd the way I laughed and laughed and laughed when she fell down leaving Taco Bell when I was a teenager. This little old man had to help her up! She will never let me live that down. 😉

31) Standing near the finish line for her races. I think I’ve only missed one or two, and the only reason I didn’t go to those is because her husband was with her. I never want her to finish a race without someone there cheering her on!

32) Getting to my school early to snag a front-row seat during my one and only play where I had a speaking and singing part.

33) Decorating Christmas cookies. This tradition is one my mom is adamant about all of us participating in to this day.

34) Sitting next to her on Grandma’s hospital bed when we said goodbye to her and watching her cry, her head on Grandma’s hand. It was an insurmountable loss for all of us, but especially for her.

35) Bringing Chip home. They bonded immediately as she sat in the back with him while I drove us home.

36) “Mark, get in your room before I say something I regret.” One beat later. “Mark, get your ass in your room!” (Mom is not one to curse so this was bananas to us, and something we all joke about now.)

37) Seeing her with my kitties. She’s not a cat person for the most part, but she loves her “grandcats” very much.

38) Taking care of her after she was hit by a car while running. I remember sitting in my car the night it happened and crying, thinking about everything we’d been through that day (hours in the ER, a police report, her fainting outside our apartment) and being so, so thankful that the worst had not happened.

39) When she graduated with her college degree. She took classes at night and worked so damn hard for it. It was one of my proudest moments.

40) Her courage to leave my father. It had to be so hard—imagine moving back in with your parents in your thirties with two preteens in tow—but she did it because she didn’t want my brother and me to believe their marriage was what marriage was supposed to look like. She did it for us, and it most likely changed the course of our lives.

41) Amusement park dates. Eating salty pretzels and getting soaked on flume rides and waiting in long lines and getting scared on roller coasters together. We always have the best time!

42) Watching reality TV together. So many hours spent sprawled in front of the TV watching American Idol and The Voice and The Amazing Race. So many arguments about who we like and don’t like!

43) Our insane love for Big Brother. I don’t know why we love this show so much, but we do and it’s bonded us in an entirely different way. We spend so much time discussing the show and talking about our favorite players and texting throughout each episode. We’re obsessed.

44) Shopping dates. There’s nothing I love more than taking a meandering walk through a retail store with her, perusing different aisles and discussing the different items we might want to buy. We also do a lot of talking about life during these dates, which makes them all the more special.

45) Knowing that my mom places zero pressure on me when it comes to dating and having kids. I’m so glad she’s not the type of person who makes comments about my chronically single status or pressures me to have kids. She’s A-OK if I decide to stay single forever!

46) Seeing her as a grandma. I love watching my mom with my nephews. She takes such joy and pleasure in them, and I see a lot of my own grandma in her.

47) Being there for me with Dutch. My mom was my rock in those final days with Dutch. She was the one who called the vet to schedule the euthanasia, the one who sat with me that last night, who was in the room with me, and who stayed in the room after I ran out of it crying. Then she took me to Starbucks and kept me busy that whole day. I wouldn’t have survived his passing without her.

48) Baking. My mom instilled in me a love of sweets and I have so many fond memories of us baking together, even if it was just a boxed mix.

49) When she didn’t blink an eye when I decided to change my major from education to communications when I was nearly finished with my degree. She just said, “OK. Let’s do this!”

50) Our jokes. My mom gets my sarcasm and gives it right back to me as good as I give it to her. It’s one of my most favorite things about our relationship!

51) Our similar anxiety. We know to say “Everything’s fine” when we call one another out of the blue. We will never send a text in the morning saying “Can you call me when you get off work?” because we know the other one will spend the entire day fretting. And when we’re having a bad anxiety episode, we know the other one will understand how it feels better than anyone.

52) All of the times she’s dropped everything to help me and take care of me, like a few weekends ago when I was having vertigo and she stopped by in the middle of a busy weekend just to make me soup.

53) All of the times she’s let me go on and on about politics, even though it’s not something she’s all that interested in. But she knows it’s important to me, so she listens.

54) “Walking and water.” “On your daughter’s birthday?” “Not here… not here… but riiiight here.” And a million other inside jokes we’ve accumulated over the years.

55) The way I’ve never, not once, doubted her love for me. It’s unconditional in every sense of the word, and I wouldn’t be who I am today without her. Every memory we’ve made makes that love so much richer and more profound. I am so glad to be her daughter.