for lilia

looking extremely unfashionable in italy the 80s

most love their mothers for all of the obvious reasons. they nurtured and nudged you into pajamas and eating your vegetables and taking cough syrup when you were sick. they changed countless diapers on your behalf and lost their youthful shape (if only for a short time or perhaps longer) in the pursuit of having you. there were stories at bedtime and homemade meals on the table, rides to ballet and swimming and horseback riding and anything else that might have entered a child's imagination, if even for a fleeting moment. there were presents carefully written onto santa's list placed under your tree and carefully laid out outfits with frills and bows and other bits and bobs that embarrass you now but which she just couldn't resist then. when you are a teen there are the countless sleepless nights you know she spent wondering where you were and then knowing that those restless nights didn't end when your adolescence did. there are the bills paid and the laundry done and the countless times that she said i love you even when you know you didn't earn it. because that is what mother's do. love unconditionally.

i was lucky enough to have a mother who did all these things for me. above and beyond for more of the time than my snarky self probably deserved. perhaps it is because she didn't have the benefit of the same motherly touch in her own life, or perhaps it is because it is in her particular nature to cajole happy outcomes out of less than perfect circumstances.

for those like me, lucky enough to still have the care and comfort of my mother, there is the added moments that go beyond the mother/child experience. now that i am 30 my mother is also my friend. she is a person who's advice and opinion i trust and although i sometimes want to react towards her like the child i used to be, deep down i know that she respects me enough to trust in my choices. i am lucky. i am so very very lucky. and like with most things i don't say it enough, i don't tell people enough or stop and appreciate all the amazing things and people that surround me. and the funny thing is that since blogging and writing everything down it has made it even more evident that i need to understand my particular bounty, and instead of railing against the lack, embrace the tangible, the embraceable.

there are a million things that i love about my mother, so in honor of her on this, her 37th mother's day, i have complied a list (she does love her lists!) of just a few of those things:

1. she has the most beautiful name i have ever heard and reminds me not only of her, but also of my late grandmother who named her
2. the way she makes eggs
3. her strange brand of feminism
4. that she defends me even when it's not warranted (unless i actually murdered someone unjustly, then she would turn me in)
5. she loves her food super hot
6. she never drinks coffee or tea with sugar
7. she talks really loudly and emphatically as if everything she is saying is the most exciting thing she has ever heard
8. she values my opinion on things like fashion and books
9. she was as wonderful a teacher as she is a mother
10. she made me the most beautifully crafted quilt when she was pregnant with me and she isn't all that crafty
11. she does everything 115% of the way
12. she never says never
13. she loves my father, even when he is a pain in the ass
14. she loves my brother and i even when we are unbearable pains in the ass
15. that she sometimes curses
16. that she'll tell me small things in confidence and it feels so special
17. that she marches to the beat of her very own drummer
18. that she likes to use phrases like the one above
19. that she won't apologize for who she is
20. that she taught me not to either
21. the way she rocks red lipstick
22. how she fought for everything she has and never says so
23. her ability to laugh at herself
24. her eggplant parmigiana
26. that she plans on growing old gracefully, but never slowing down
27. the fact that she has no idea how beautiful she is
28. that she encourages every idea or whim i choose to pursue
29. that she has 15 different nicknames for me including cookie, bubie and brunhilda
30. the way she taught me how to love by example

this list could go on and on, but you like things to be quick and efficient so i'll just say i love you mama. thank you.