A Letter to My Mom.
Most of you probably know that we are quickly approaching
the first birthday we will celebrate for my mom – without her. I wanted to take this opportunity to
publicly thank her for being my mom.
If I had been granted the gift of foresight, I would have done this last
year, but alas, I am burdened like the rest of us with living life from moment
to moment. So, if I could have, here is
what I would have written:
Dear Mom,
I probably don’t thank you often enough for being my
mom. In fact, I’m not sure if I have
ever thanked you. I probably
should. As far as mom’s go, you are
pretty top-shelf. Sure, you get a little
annoying and are super messy (by the way – Matt found the coffee stain on the
mattress that we tried to hide) but at the end of the day you are pretty darn
great. I thought you might like to read
just a few of the reasons:
1.
You married Dad.
Sure, he is a little rough around the edges, but the two of you together
made some pretty great kids and in turn, we made some pretty great kids and at
the end of the day – we have a pretty awesome family. That all started with you guys. Thank you.
2.
You let us laugh at (and usually with) you. I’m not going to sugar coat this – you are
pretty easy to make fun of. You just
make it so stinking easy. And, to top it
off, you laugh along with us. Thank you
for teaching me that self-depreciating humor is okay. I not only inherited this wit from someone
along the way, I also learned that laughing is maybe the best way to deal with
any situation. Crying doesn’t do us much
good – thank you for teaching me to always look for the best in any situation
and when you can’t find a “best” there is probably something to make fun of that
will get you laughing anyway.
3.
Thank you for always making sure I looked
normal. I know our family didn’t have a
lot growing up. I’m not complaining – I am
very thankful for our middle-classedness.
But I know that with dad owning a small business and with you working at
a factory, Girbaud jeans were probably not always in the budget. But I always had them. And I always had the “right” kind of
shoes. In your wisdom (not vanity,
wisdom), you knew the value of us having the clothes that made us fit in. God help us if I had to do that based solely
on my personality.
4.
Thank you for always answering the phone “mm-yello”. That is hard to type, but I hear it perfectly
in my head. I admit: we often called you just to hear that and get
a good laugh and then hung up. Again,
laughing with you….
5.
Thank you for teaching me that relationships
with people are what matters. You were a
great friend to your friends, a great sister/daughter/etc. to your family and a
great mom to us. I admire that about you
and try to model it.
6.
Thank you for loving food as much as I do. Only in our family can we make you a taco dip
birthday cake and everyone accepts it as perfectly awesome. Whenever we order Casey’s pizza, I still want
to eat a bag of Doritos with it, because that is how we roll in the Stolz
family.
7.
Thank you for teaching me that you are never too
old to figure out your role in the world and in turn, realize your dreams. When I think about what a stressful situation
you must have been in when Sara Lee closed, it makes me appreciate the type of
person you are even more. I am only 33
and I can’t imagine starting over right now.
But you did. And you did it by
kicking ass and taking names. You worked
hard and deserved every A you got. You
had to partner with people younger than me and work together to create
projects. You became friends with those
same people that were more than half your age and they are better for it. Then you graduated and had to go on job
interviews. And then you got a job. And because of that job you changed lives. Of students, of teachers, of coworkers, of administrators. Amazing.
8.
Thank you for being an amazing grandma. Thank you for walking with me and pushing
strollers and just talking about life.
Thank you for knowing when you were starting to annoy me by talking too
much and just walking quietly. Thank you
for always being willing to listen to a monitor so that Matt and I could have
some valuable alone time.
9.
Thank you for being a funny sleeper. Matt and I continue to (and will probably
always) tell the story of when you proclaimed “I EAT MEAT” in a very beastly
voice when we shared a hotel room.
10.
Thank you for being you. I could go on forever about what makes you so
special and why I am so grateful for the fact that you are my mom, but in the
end, I just want you to know that I am just that – grateful. Obviously, Maddie will be just as lucky to
have a mom just like you, because I learned everything I know about being a
good mom from you. Well, maybe not
everything. There are some notes I took
that I think I could put in the “Don’t Do This” category. But that is a whole other letter. Maybe for next year’s birthday…
