I was smart, and many of my male peers didn’t ask me on dates until my mother offered me this sage advice: you need to act dumb! I took that to heart, and miracle of miracles, I found that boys became more attracted to me and began to take me out. I even started having a relationship with a BMOC that lasted for 6 years until we got engaged and I broke the engagement.

On a more serious note, I loved my mother deeply, and she taught me so much that was valuable and worthwhile. She was smart, accomplished, and she didn’t suffer fools, including me. Her life had been filled with trauma and poverty into her early twenties, and her main goal in life was to be a good mother. She was that to me. We were different in so many ways, and as I grew up, we staked out our different positions and then accepted each other with respect and love. I had tremendous admiration for who she was and what she accomplished and how much she gave to me. She was my rock, and she always believed I could accomplish whatever I wanted as long as I worked really hard to achieve it. Being a good mother, parent is really difficult work and I celebrate her and all of the imperfect parents who try their hardest to be the best mothers and fathers they can be!