My Mama

My mom could drink out of a "World's Best Mom" coffee mug with some serious confidence. I'm pretty sure there are other moms out there who could drink from it and not feel like a total fraud, but they still probably don't live up to mine.

My mom used to take my grandma's elderly friend on outings from her nursing home because she had no other family. Once when we were taking her home I sat in the backseat and silently cried when this woman was going on about how wonderful my mom was for all she was doing. I was so proud and just thought about how lucky my sisters and I were to have her. Sometimes I feel like all I do is take take take. I'm the little boy, she's the Giving Tree. It will be impossible to repay her for all she has done for me (and my family), so I'm probably going to have to pay it forward instead.

I'll pay it forward by trying to do these things as successfully as my own mother:

• Make all of my kids feel like they are genuinely my favorite (seriously, ask my sisters, I bet they each think they are our mother's favorite)
• Be such a great listening ear that they want to talk to me every day
• Be so supportive and empathetic that they know that I truly feel their ups and downs as much as they do
• Be so kind to other people that they forever think they are too mean and are therefore forever trying to be nicer
• Be so generous of my time that I make them feel like they are doing me a favor by letting me help them (I don't know how my mom does this, but trust me, she does)
• Be so thoughtful that all my kids' friends are a little jealous them (hello college care packages!)
• Make sure they know how proud I am of them, so much so that they can count on any tiny little thing to be met with great enthusiasm, so they in turn want to share any tiny little thing with me
• Be so open minded that I can learn things from my kids at any stage in life (I got my mom to start running in her early fifties!)

I'm sure there are a million more wonderful things that I could list about my mother. This week especially has reminded me of how freaking lucky I am. I have been going nonstop to prepare for Run Like a Mother and she has bent over backwards to help. She has spent hours with my kids so that I could work and has also spent hours helping me after that kids have gone to bed. She even scrubbed out my gross recycle bin today while I was out running errands. For real. In fact, she's one of the main reasons I have 15 minutes to blog right now and can actually relax a bit tonight before the weekend hullabaloo commences in the morning!

So Happy Mother's Day, Mom. You've set the bar pretty damn high. Love you :)