MOM is WOW upside down

About a month ago, someone told me mothers and daughters aren't supposed to see eye to eye. That's just the way it is.

I love my Mother. I love all of her strength and her quirks best. It's not easy to show how much I love her sometimes though. It's hard for me to find the words over the phone that she probably needs to or should hear. I love her. Always.

I love you Mom.

As a kid, I remember slamming my bedroom door out of whatever my current adolescent outrage was and thinking, she just doesn't understand me. She doesn't get me. Sometimes as an adult I still feel that way. I wonder now if she was thinking, I am trying my best to teach my daughter to understand and get how the world is. I want what's best for her.

I love my Mom. It's strange to look back on my life and have the very real realization that in a lot of ways she has always known my heart better than me. And only now, as a grown-up do I see that she has always and most likely still knows what's best. As mothers tend to. She always gave me the space to figure stuff out for my hardheaded self, because she knows that's my nature as only a mom would or could.

I love my Ma. Since I can remember I have loved reading, writing, and words. In junior high without hesitation, my Mom signed me up for an annual young author's conference that involved missing class and a bus trip to a college. For the first time, I met real life authors who made a living making their readers feel something. She knew I loved writing before I did.

In high school, I wanted to switch my foreign language elective from Spanish to French. I handed her the registration form, and she wasn't having it. She firmly told me Spanish would be helpful in my life. I was more than a little upset. At the end of the day and form, I ended up taking both languages for the rest of high school. She recognized my love of verb conjugations before I did.

Seeing eye to eye has at times been difficult. Difficult in that I always fought that she knows me in a way no one else ever will. Why that has been upsetting, I will never know. I'll blame it on her encouraging my independence. As children tend to.

Mom started a book club with her girlfriends. When we talk on the phone she tells me what she's been reading. Sometimes she reads books that I have, more often than not though, she tells me about a great read that I need to check out. Reading the same books as my Mother moves my heart beyond words. No words. Imagine that.

We've both had a year, that's for sure. A year of having a hard time finding words for one another.

We have the words of others though. Words and stories that move us. I find comfort in knowing this.

Since those young writer conferences Mom sent me to as a kid, I have always wanted to write a book. To be an author. To have my words make people feel something.

The book hasn't been written yet. I don't have the words and I don't know the story. Not yet.

However,

the dedication page has always been written.

So, here goes:

To the woman who knows and encourages me. The woman who has given me the courage to be strong and quirky and at the end of the day, know I'm okay.

Mom.

This isn't a published novel,

but this one goes out to you.

(Even though we disagree on the pronunciation of "poem"!)

I love you. Thank you.