My Mom

Mother’s are like dogs: Everybody thinks his is the best.

Unless we’re living in billions of parallel universes, everyone having the best mom (or dog) is impossible. So I would like to clear up any confusion surrounding this question and set the matter straight. It is I alone who have the best mom in the world.

Sorry. I’m just a lucky guy.

Now, I’m big-hearted enough to recognize the lovely and endearing qualities all the other mom’s out there possess, and I’m gladdened to know that countless sons and daughters enjoy something approaching the satisfaction I enjoy. Nothing in life matches a mother’s love and affection, her concern and care, her passion for her children. Maternal nurturing is one of the brightest forces in the known universe, and all of us fortunate enough to have a mother to guide us and protect us know the beauty and hopefulness of that profound power.

My mom, though, is particularly wonderful. She’s smart and sensitive, inquisitive and pedantic, expressive and empathetic. She’s curious, reflective and opinionated, and even when her opinions are contrary to mine and therefore mistaken she still believes in them with the fierce conviction of an unreconstructed lefty who has never stopped hoping the world can (and should) be a better place.

My mom is a grandmother, too, and reports from the field indicate she’s also the best grandma extant, which will come as no shock to those who remember her teaching her sons to read and paint and think at an age when most kids these days are still parked in front of video screens. My mom is old school. The mothering skills that have worked for centuries still work best, and in her case she’s updated them through her own modern sensibility, creating a new proto-Mom that could easily serve as the rubric for aspiring mommies in the coming decades.

She’s a rare one, my mom is. If you’ve been blessed to meet her, you know of what I write. If you haven’t, you should.

I tell her almost every day that I love her, and that I’m thankful she’s my mom. On Mother’s Day, the official holiday that recognizes the people who make the world a beautiful place, I’ll say it again: I love my mom, Renice. (Rhymes with Venice). My brother and I are the luckiest children in the world.

We’re are all blessed to have a mom. But me especially.