Ode to the Grand Admiral Madre (or, "My Mother is My Role Model")

Well, I certainly can't get all sentimental about my Daddy without touching on my Mama, can I?

My mother is one hell of a strong lady.  It takes an iron will to be the rock of a family that moved around as much as ours has. She has taught me how to be a better hostess, a decent cook, how to have good manners, and how to come up with a good zinger on the off-chance that someone's being horrid to you.  She taught me how important it is to stand up for yourself; that there's a big difference between being kind and being a pushover. 

Mama, I'm indebted to you for so many reasons:

• When I was maybe 5, you asked for my opinion before deciding your work schedule (working weekends = no biscuits for breakfast, working weekday afternoons = no Mama/snack time after kindergarten).  That made me feel so very important. 
• For dance lessons, letting me read aloud to you, letting me dress up in your old stuff, and all the other little ways you encouraged your budding actress years before I ever even stepped on a stage.
• You remember when we got locked out of our flat in Barbados?  We decided to stack up the neighbor's patio furniture and you let me climb up onto the balcony to get back in.  Funniest example in my mind of creative female problem solving.  And sheer enjoyment of celebratory Coca Cola.
• Always bopping around and singing goofy songs.  Because of you, I have zero shame about dancing and singing along to the muzak at the grocery store, in elevators, or department stores.  By myself.
• For pushing and working so hard for me to get to experience the things you didn't have in your own childhood.  Thank you for summer camp, swim lessons, band, and never making me clean my plate (other than the veggies). 
• Giving me A Tree Grows in Brooklyn at age 11, and telling me how important it was to you at that age.  You remember how battered my copy became?  That's a true testament to how well you spoke to my heart from behind the scenes, at a time when I was definitely a difficult kid.  To this day, I consider that book to be a love letter from a mother to a daughter.
• Thank you for all those random trips to the pet store to look at puppies, just because.  And thanks heaps for being a huge softie for a little red-head Chow Shepard mix with a neurological twitch.  And thanks most of all for making up a story that we were puppysitting so Daddy would have a whole week to fall in love with her so he would let us keep her. Your suggestion to Southernize her name from "Blue" to "Bonnie Blue" sure didn't hurt.
• You were so candid with your stories about how you were teased as a kid for being so skinny.  Thank you for constantly reminding me how it would suddenly becomes an enviable trait as an adult (you so nailed that one!).  And
• For raising me to just assume that I would go to college.  Not only that, but for constantly reminding me during the middle school and high school rough patches that college was going to be so much more fun, open-minded, freeing, and interesting than anything I had yet experienced (it totally was).
• When HD was born, I know you were so excited to see your new grandbaby.  But I know that first and foremost you wanted to make sure that I was ok.  Thanks for kicking it for hours in that waiting room, just in case I needed you.  Knowing you were nearby was a huge, huge help.

 I feel like more than any person in my life, you and I have managed to change, adapt, and grow the most together, always for the better.  I love that we get to be adults together now, and that you can be my friend as well as my parent.  Everyone should get to be friends with someone as honest, funny, and caring as you.