for my GREAT MOM
From her birthday and Mother’s Day weekend, 2007.
In December 2008, my mom took me to the orthodontist for the first time. Within a week, I had braces, and I remained a patient there for five or six more years, including a second set of braces.
The point is: I went to the orthodontist a lot, for a long time. Each time I sat in that chair, I looked at the monitor—which was definitely meant only for the employees’ eyes but which I could, with a little neck craning, read. And so every time I went to the orthodontist I could see the note that one of the employees made at my very first appointment, reminding me of what I knew to be true: GREAT MOM.
When, later that school year, my mom was a chaperone on our fifth grade trip to Washington, D.C., I was ecstatic—and the same was true almost six years later, when she and my dad were chaperones on a youth mission trip to D.C. In middle school, I was never embarrassed when my mom showed up to school as a volunteer. Truthfully, she was more popular than I was—I can still hear a whole gaggle of football players shouting, “Hi, Mrs. Lisa!” Even in college, I was happy to have her around—I think she was the only parent to attend our Kentucky Kernel end-of-year banquet in 2019. Just a few months ago, the dean of the UK college in which I now teach met my mom for the second time and clearly remembered her from years ago.
Everyone knows it: I’ve got a great mom.
Of course I’m writing this today because it’s Mother’s Day, but Thursday was also my mom’s birthday—that’s right, someone so worthy of celebration often has her two biggest celebrations smushed together.
We got the chance to celebrate her this weekend, but as is so often the case with mothers in general and mine in particular, she shared the spotlight. She spent her birthday week celebrating graduations for those she loves and supports: my sister Cayden, who finished her associate’s degree, and my brother-in-law David, who graduated from UK with an engineering degree and walked in commencement on Saturday.
Unsurprisingly, Taylor Swift has a lyric for that, in a song about her mother: “And I love you for…staying back and watching me shine.”
Not a single ray of our shine would be possible without my mom’s own shine and her support. So, to my mom: Thank you. Happy birthday. Happy Mother’s Day. I love you!
Anytime I write something new for my mom, I think of the piece I wrote for her when I graduated college—virtually, on her birthday: For my mom, on your birthday and my graduation day.
Then I started thinking about other pieces I’ve written about mothers or that feature mother-daughter relationships. A few favorites: