My Mother. My Friend. My Inspiration.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his. ~Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

My mom is a neverending song in my heart of comfort, happiness, and being. I may sometimes forget the words but I always remember the tune. ~Graycie Harmon

The above quotes perfectly sum up my mother to me. She is everything I could ever want to be, but never will attain. She is the strength in my heart, when I thought I had given everything I had. She is the smile in the corners of my mouth when I thought I would never smile again. She is the friend I can turn to when all others have turned their backs. She is the arms that held me, not because she had to, but because she wanted to. 

The truth is, I could write forever and still not express the way in which I feel for her. When I was a child, she would stop whatever she was doing to tuck me in at night. She would sit on the side of my bed and read my bedtime stories from an old book with pictures of vintage looking children; little girls in their pink, frilly dresses-little boys in their blue coveralls. I remember laying there being so soothes by the sound of her voice. A teacher by nature, she had was a fantastic story teller. She had a way of making each character come to life; a play taking place in a little theatre on the foot of my bed. She sat with me as I said my prayers, asking the Lord to bless my family and not to forget my stuffed animals.

I could take anything to her that had broken and she could fix it. Many a decapitated barbie doll passed through her hands, which mended the plastic body and handed it back-good as new. I used to think that she could have fixed the world, if only the right people had asked. I still do.

She supported me incessantly in whatever my dream of the moment was. I wanted to be a dancer. She paid for me to take dance lessons for eleven years. I wanted to play the clarinet. She bought me a beautiful instrument that carried me into a new phase of my life.

When I discovered at age seven that I wanted to be a writer, she watched me as I wrote a ten page masterpiece titled "The Killer of Love" (based on the familiar Harlequin romance novels I saw her and my grandmother reading of course). Her and my father acted out their given parts with enthusiasm and vigor. She encouraged me to keep writing when she bought me my first type writer and supplied me with plenty of paper on which to craft my next work of art. As I grew and my writing grew, she gave me journal upon journal to document my thoughts. She told me of how she used to write when she was my age and gave me a notebook full of her teenage thoughts. It is something I treasure to this day.

She is always the first person to be proud of me and never fails to show that to other people, never in a boastful or negative way. It used to embarrass me when I was a teenager, as I am a fairly modest person. As time went on, I learned to enjoy it. She was proud of me. What shame was there in that?

The older I get, the more our relationship tends to change. There is a time in every child's life when the veil of perfection that has shrouded our parents is lifted- and we see them for the first time as humans who make mistakes. It is a bittersweet moment that comes with realizing that before your parents were your parents, they were just people-like you; moving through life trying to figure it out. They were people who loved you when it was difficult, even at times when, to someone else, you might have been unlovable. It makes me want to put my arms around her to shield her from anything or anyone who might hurt her. I suppose this is how she feels towards me, as if her love has been superimposed onto my heart.

My mother sacrificed for me, as did my father. She would often go without so that I might have that doll at Christmas or that dance costume for the recital. She never failed to tell me she loved me. She never failed to encourage me to dream the impossible dream. She always held me higher than herself so that I might reach the stars, herself perfectly content to remain in the ground. She let me have my own adventures, consuming me with the thought that I could be whatever I wanted to be; yet she remained in my shadow-always ready to come out and rid my world of the people who told me I could not.

My mother loves me with a love that has yet to be matched by any mortal heart. She loves me wholly, completely, unabashedly for who I am. She never tried to make me into someone I didn't want to be. I can only hope that the love I give her in return is enough. Though she deserves so much more than I could ever give.

If your reading this, Happy Birthday, Mom. I love you.