For My Mother

In honor of Mother’s Day, I was going to interview my mom, but as it worked out our schedules were unable to collide in time for me to run a proper session. So instead, I decided to write down some thoughts on my mother from my perspective. 

Since birth, my mother has had to deal with quite a bit. I’m the oldest, one of two, and I presented some interesting issues from a young age. I had night terrors as an infant. I was nearly impossible to put down for naps. At day care when my mother was still working I got into trouble all the time. In fact, one time I abandoned my crib at the day care and broke into the woman’s medicine cabinet. I demanded to sleep in my parents bed until I was eight. I needed one of them to put me to bed until I was eleven. 

My mother is far more to our family that just a mother. She’s a chef. Five days a week she is planning new meals and trying her best to rotate meats and vegetables into our diets while researching new dishes. She does all she can to bring our family together over dinner no matter how many schedule conflicts we present. 

My mother is a cleaner. Every week she is deep in the filth of our home, cleaning till it’s absolutely spotless. Her job is never done in her eyes. 

My mother is a gardener. She works to maintain every part of our backyard. From the blooming grape vine to the weeds in the far corners, I often find her up to her knees in dirt and scrapes with a cat or two watching her from the bushes. 

My mother is a teacher. In the third grade I was struggling to succeed in school. When my teacher was unable to help, my mom dropped everything to homeschool me for the rest of that year. Every morning we dropped my sister off at preschool and went surfing. She taught me various lessons throughout the day, made me lunch at noon and worked hard to keep school interesting for me and my short attention span. 

My mother is a coach. A runner herself in high school, she inspired me to take on the Los Angeles Marathon at age 15. Knowing nothing about what I was getting into, her support was all I needed to join my middle school’s Students Run LA program and train for the race. Every practice, I heard her voice in my head, pushing me a little farther, asking me to go a little faster. It followed me into high school, where I took on cross-country and track. All summer she got up at the crack of dawn to drive me to practice for two years until I earned my license. At the end of the race, she was there to hold me. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t cry whenever I saw her. 

My mother is a supporter. I tell her nearly everything, even details from my day that are absolutely unnecessary for her to know. I thank her for always listening, even when I drone on and on about elusive plans for the future multiple times a day until I can feel them coming into place. When I was rejected from my top college choice, she was there. I came into her room at midnight, fresh off a shift from work, covered in sweat. She grabbed my broken body and held me together. When I got into a college that was going to send me to London for four months, she sat with me and packed my entire life into one suitcase. She let me call her everyday to plague her with details from my new life and the struggles I was facing being so far from home. When I returned to California and couldn’t tell whether or not to stick with that college, she sat me down at midnight to help me work through my emotions until I decided to stay home and drop out. She held me once again as I shook so hard I was sure I forgot how to breathe, and then the next morning she drove me to the local community college to speak to a counselor about classes. 

There’s a lot more I could say about her; About all the times she’s stood up for me and pushed me to my best and pulled me through my worst. As I enter into this new phase of adulthood, an adulthood where I will soon be moving away from her and fending for myself, I still hear her. I hear her in the grocery store, I hear her while I clean, I hear her as I do my school work, I hear her while I drive. Her words follow me wherever I go, and I couldn’t be anywhere close to where I am today without her.