Mom

My mom loves orange sherbet and tamales.

She played Joan of Arc in college.

She and my dad fell in love when they were nineteen. She told me recently that part of the reason they've stayed together all this time is sharing not only common values and faith but liking to do the same things. "We both love football," she said, "and going to plays." My mom and dad are still in love. They genuinely like doing things together. They always have each other's backs. It is both inspiring and impossible to live up to.

At least one of my friend's dads has a (harmless) crush on my mom. He doesn't ask me, "How's your mom?" He asks me, "How is your beautiful mom?"

People think my mom is beautiful. My dad stared at her walking through a parking lot once when we were sitting in his car. "Look at her," he said. "Isn't she beautiful?" My mom does not know how beautiful she is.

My mom is the kind of person who tells you that you can't be all things to all people -- but she does not follow her own advice. She is so many things to so many people. She's attended daily mass since she was a little girl, where she prayed every day that God would send her a good husband. She visits the nursing home on a regular basis even though we no longer have any relatives living in any of them. Old people adopt my mother, and she adopts them. One elderly gentleman in particular loved and adored my mom, and she took some camellia trees from his yard and now they grow in her yard. She calls them "Kap's camellias" because Kap was his name. My mom transplanted some daylilies from her mother's yard to hers, and then from her yard to mine. They are currently exploding.

My mom has a regular list of people she meets with on a weekly basis to give them spiritual guidance. I've no doubt that she helps them to figure out whatever they're trying to figure out, to find whatever they are seeking.

My mom loves An Affair to Remember and To Kill a Mockingbird.

My mom's first boyfriend was gay.

She was raised by a single mother of five, and they didn't have a lot of money. She remains the thriftiest person I have ever known. She has a knack for finding the most beautiful clothes at consignment stores. She does not waste; if something she buys isn't right, she'll return it and get that refund, even if it's only $2. She didn't believe in buying us a lot of name-brand clothing, and I appreciate that, as I told her recently. I didn't when I was younger, like when I was in the bathroom stall at school and overheard a Mean Girl saying that I wore the same Esprit shirt on every free dress day, but now I like that I don't care a lick about expensive purses or sunglasses or jeans. She would regularly remind us to turn off the lights, chiming on repeat: "The more money we give to Gulf States Utilities, the less money we have for other things." I am as a result maniacal about my air conditioner and heater. I'd rather it be 80 degrees in my house in the summer and 60 in the winter than spend hundreds of dollars on my utility bill.

My mom was once an English teacher and then a creative writing teacher. She taught the older kids at my school when I was young, and I remember my friend's older sister telling me that my mom was her favorite teacher and how proud that made me. My mom is the sort of person who has written letters to the editor lamenting poor grammar exhibited by beauty queens during the question/answer portion of the pageant or valedictorians during their speeches.

My mom is a clipper and a saver of words. She has files and files of clippings of articles and essays and cartoons that are organized by subject matter and she can always put her hands on the appropriate one depending on what is going on in your life.

My mom really, really, really, really, really believes in and loves God.

She tells me one of her major regrets of my childhood is fighting with me over what I could and could not wear. She also has blocked out, apparently, the memory of washing my mouth out with soap on two occasions. I don't hold it against her, because I think I probably deserved it.

My mom let us make "potions" out of all of the liquids and solids in her refrigerator and pantry. Pickle juice and mayonnaise and paprika. I also vaguely remember making mud pies. My mom taught us to put toothpaste on bee and caterpillar stings.

My mom is all about breastfeeding. I also remember her letting my little brother run around naked a lot when he was a baby and her commenting that it's okay to do that because it makes babies so happy. I told her recently that I think that my little brother being born when were 11, almost 9, and 7 was the unifying event of our lives and that maybe the reason our childhoods were so lovely was that we had this one bright ray of sunshine that we all focused on all of the time. There was something about his birth and the fact that he was so blond and beautiful and perfect and fun that made us all nicer people, I think, and maybe made us all love each other more than we had before.

Once my mom bought us all new shoes just before the end of the school year. I didn't wear them all summer, and when it was time for school to start again, she said I didn't need new shoes because mine were practically new. I reacted to this by locking myself in the bathroom and writing a distraught letter to Ann Landers.

My mom has a very green thumb and always has plants growing beautifully both inside and outside her house.

Once my mother yelled at me that my room was such a disgrace with its piles of clothes all over the floor that I might as well take a pair of scissors and cut up all of my clothes for how well I treated them and how shameful it was because my dad worked so hard to make the money to buy them.

My mom has lots of themed holiday figurines and always tries to make the house festive. When she buys something really nice, it's usually on the last day of an estate sale when it's half-price.

My mom always has extra gift wrapping supplies in her hall closet and threatened us upon pain of death always to send thank you notes.

My friend calls me for advice and instead of asking, "WWJD?" she asks, "WWLD?" because my mom's name starts with an "L." It's just kind of a given that what my mom would do is the kind thing and the right thing, even if it's the hard thing.

Here are some things I remember my mom cooking when we were little: tacos, hamburgers, pork chops, veal cutlets, shrimp stew, chicken stew, macaroni and cheese (both boxed Kraft and homemade), roast, spaghetti, shrimp and corn soup, crawfish etoufee, drop Bisquick biscuits, grits and bacon, tuna salad, and homemade pizza. She always told us to chew our hot dogs well or we would throw up. She always had a box of popsicles in the freezer and my old friend claims to this day that no one made better peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. She tried switching us to wheat bread when her little sister moved to California but we were like, oh hell no. She also makes an insanely good chocolate sheet cake which has a stick of butter in the batter and a stick of butter in the icing. She also used to make heavenly hash cake, and she would make angel food cake for her mom.

She had a complicated relationship with her mother, mostly, I think, because her mother was a very complicated woman. But she was always kind to her, even when my grandmother was at her meanest and most difficult, and she taught us to be that way, too. (Even though sometimes she would vent behind her back: "She just makes things up. She MAKES things UP!" Which she did.)

My mom bought us red jell-o to eat out of the box before our swim meets and always wore a red shirt to our meets because red was our team color. My mom is the only person who knows how to get stains out of our sweaters.

My mom really likes the love songs of Lionel Richie. She loves Mandy Patinkin's voice. Her only albums growing up were the soundtracks to Oklahoma and South Pacific, so she still knows them by heart, along with many, many other musicals. My dad likes musicals, too, but I think my mom is the one who really made me love them because I can't remember a time when movies like The Sound of Music and West Side Story and Grease were not on in our house and I suspect that was her doing. My mom loves to read and always let me check out as many books from the library as I wanted.

Once a perfect stranger stopped my mom in front of a video store to tell her that she had really nice calves. And she does really have nice calves. She has long been a regular exerciser, much more faithful at it than I have ever been. I like the fact that I think she secretly hates it. There is something me that cannot fully trust a person who loves exercising.

My mom's reactions to things have really gone down in family history. Once my sister spilled a giant pitcher of sweetened iced tea and my mom yelled so loudly that it echoed through the neighborhood treetops: "Four quarts of tea on the floor!" It was a cry of despair and disbelief. And once my sister rigged the sink sprayer with a rubber band so it would spray on the stomach of whoever turned on the sink water, and it hit an unexpected target, my dad, who was none too pleased. My mom emitted a similar cry: "Where's the camera?!" as if it were so hilarious that it should have been captured on film, but not really because it was so stupid and she was so fed up with all of us.

I remember once when my mom was sitting on the backyard swing crying and saying she just wanted to run away. This is a very, very vague and hazy memory and I don't know if it actually happened or if it was a dream. I guess it's understandable if it really happened ... at one point she had three kids under the age of four and I'm sure we drove her over the edge on a regular basis.

My mom helped me to re-grow my front yard and plant my front bed. I am complimented on my front bed on a regular basis.

My mom believes we have to face our childhood wounds in order to be set free of them. She asked me recently if I have any childhood wounds and told me she wonders what my siblings and I think about when we look back on our childhoods. I told her I can't really think of any childhood wounds, and it's true. My main heartbreak when I was a little girl was that they wouldn't let me have a cocker spaniel.

I think my mom gave us the childhood she didn't have but always wanted.

Last night my mom stopped by my house to bring me her special ice cream dessert, leftover carrot salad, and leftover cabbage salad. Just because she knows I like them.

I hope that I make her even half as proud as she makes me.