Happy Mother’s Day!

More than anyone else in the world, my mother is the person who truly gets me. Of all the things I love about her, her ability to understand exactly what is happening before I even have a chance to tell her is what I appreciate the most.

When I am getting sick, she always knows hours before the symptoms arrive. “You are looking peaked,” she will say.

When I am tired, she tells me I should be taking vitamins. When I am stressed, she knows exactly when I need to talk it out, and when I need to be left alone.

As a teenager, I never fully appreciated my mother’s brand of advice. I remember thinking it was cold and that I needed someone who would build me up instead of leveling me with pressure to “take the higher road.”

As an adult, I can look back and see clearly that my mom was actively teaching me one of life’s most valuable lessons. The higher road is always two things: It is always harder, and it is always right.

I tried to think of just one story to tell, but there are just so many. So instead, I have selected smaller stories that I know represent my mother:

• When I was very young, I could not handle making mistakes while writing. If I misspelled a word, I would furiously take my eraser to paper until I was left with a large gray spot, the paper torn, and tears streaming down my face. To this day, my mother still knows when I am verging on obsession. She will look at me, calmly, and say, “Nicole, stop erasing.” In that moment, I know that I have at least done my best.
• Around midnight on my sixteenth birthday, my mother woke me up with a box in her hand. In the minutes between the ages of 15 and 16, she gave me the most beautiful platinum ring from my great-grandmother. Never having known my own grandmother, this ring bridged a gap of women in our family. The ring held a single diamond, surrounded by delicate filigree, which my mother had repaired and fitted for me. It is the most meaningful gift I have ever received, and I am not even sure if she knows this, but I fell in love with my wedding set because I fell in love with that ring first.
• In high school, there was a period of time when I had two jobs, an internship, a I was taking college courses. For about 3 months, I became so forgetful that I was calling my mother every other day to bring me homework assignments that I had forgotten at home. Normally, my mother would not appreciate this much—but she came to my rescue every time, with no complaints. At the end of that quarter, I was literally exhausted. We could only miss so much school and still qualify for exam exemptions, so what did my mother do? She helped me to orchestrate an afternoon of hooky, picking me up at just the right time so that I could go home and sleep.

These are, of course, just snapshots of the lifetime I have spent being my mother’s daughter. Unfortunately, they do her no justice.

More than anything else, this is what I love about my mother: She is the most just person that I will ever know.

It never occurs to her to do a selfish thing. Everything she does is for the people around her, whether that person is family, or just someone new to her office who needs a Mama Lark in their life.

More than that, my mother has a way of challenging you to become the best version of yourself without you ever knowing she is doing it. For more than 25 years, she has been there: Happy to be in the background, celebrating every one of my successes, big and small.

I could never give my mother enough credit, but I also could not possibly love her any more.

For staying home to raise me, for helping me plan a wedding and furnish a home, and more than anything—for teaching me what it means to be a strong woman and a compassionate wife—thank you for being my mom.