Today is a very special day. 

Today was my mom’s birthday and her first cousin,  JFS, who always said my mom was her 20th birthday present, I was always tickled by that. 

I’ve told you stuff here and there about my mom, now I’ll tell you some more, and if I repeat myself, sorry. I guess that would be a compliment, telling you the same great stuff about her!

There was no one like her, that’s for sure. One of the smartest people I knew, could do almost anything, and knew everything, her flaw… She couldn’t add any variation of 8+5, that always baffled me,  and her, as you can imagine. 

She had a love of art, she could Spend hours in a museum looking at every painting and reading every single placard. It was great and exhausting! We loved a lot of the same artists,admired the same techniques, the brushstrokes and it was fun and interesting to hear her take on certain pieces.

She was great at playing trivial pursuit, especially geography, literature and science, she couldn’t be beat. She loved playing thinking games like Otello and Scrabble and we would play Boggle for days.

She was a foodie,  loved to experiment with meals, : what’s for dinner mommy?” “Poison”. Oh, ok. and what she came up with was usually fabulous. There were times she could be down to earth with her pallet, pb&j, pizza, breakfast for dinner.

Travelling with her was both fun and frustrating, there were planned walks, most things were educational, a good thing, but boring to a 13 year old!  She made sure we got something out of every experience. 

One of the funny things… we would drive through the tunnels heading into NYC and she would comment on how dirty the walls/tiles were and would we, GES and I love to clean it and we would roll our eyes at her and as we got older, tease her about it. When GES and would ride through the tunnels in Boston, she started doing the same thing with her girls and now, when we’re all together,  the girls say something about cleaning the tunnel, the tradition lives on. 

I could go on for days about my mom,  but what will I talk about next year?

My mom as gear,  she taught us what it means to be a mom, the good and the bad and we learned. I saw her in me with my kids, my sister does with her kids, especially those things we never thought we’d say! My daughter told me ib taught her how to be a step mom,  which meant the world to me and i see how my sister is raising her kids,  can’t deny it,  don’t want to!

She is never far from our thoughts. GES… let’s get those decorations from the barrel up! 

Happy birthday mommy.  I love you.