It's Mother's Day and because of that, I want to celebrate my mother.

My mother and I are about as different as two people can be. Yet, as I grow older start to see her in things that I do or say or see parts of her as my body slowly morphs. It freaks me out.

My mother married my father 40 years ago this year, if you can believe that shit. They are still married. He was her older brother's best friend and she was the dopey tag-along sister, with the exception that she was also hot. Super hot. Model hot. She modeled as a child, following the footsteps of the grandmother I share with Marnie2000, whom modeled for fashion houses in New York City.

My mother's mother was not only headstrong, she was beautiful. Probably a lethal combination because when one of the men in her family pissed her off, she would scrounge up change for train fare and ride to New York City where she would crash with one of her modeling friends and had a standing open invitation to come back to any of the fashion houses where she had modeled. Her father and brother would beg her to return home, but she refused to budge and would stay in New York and live it up until she blew all of her wages and got sick of parading around in front of wealthy men shopping for their indulgent wives and probably, if all worked out, a long-legged house model to boot. When she blew all her money, she'd call home and one of the men would be sent to retrieve her. And that's how it went, I guess until she married my grandfather.

My parents told me that story this year, and just toward the end, a lightbulb went off in father's eyes and he looked at me and snorted, "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, does it?" My mother laughed.

I resemble that remark.

So, my mother was raised by this fashion plate, who was also quite a drinker and a bit eccentric. She was so terrified of storms, she would grab the three children, which was more often four because they cared for a cousin 5 days a week while her mother worked nights, and throw them into the dark crawlspace under the huge wooden staircase and hide with them until the storm ended. I can only imagine the damage this did to the children, but I know to this day my mother absolutely freaks out during storms. We are never allowed to leave her and she makes us unplug everything in the house, EVERYTHING, and assemble candles, even for a quick shower.

It's all unclear how my mom and my Dad got together but it's somewhere around the time that my Dad, my Mom and her brother went to this wild party and got rip-roaring drunk and ended up jumping out of second story windows to escape from the police raid in which Uncle HP got dragged into jail. Immediately following they were all sent away. My grandparents railroaded my uncle into the army, my father was sent to college and my mother stayed to finish high school. The trio was split up.

Sometime period that followed, my dad started and dropped out of a succession of colleges, the first after his roommate set the college on fire and hit the road on the lam for arson. Sometime along here he went into the army. Then he landed in Washington, D.C. He was an artist.

My mother was coming to D.C. for the weekend with her parents and spent it hanging out with my Dad. he asked her to marry him. She said "maybe" or "I'll think about it" and then left him on a park bench. He freaked out. Apparently over the next two weeks he wrote her a nasty letter and said he was taking back the proposal and that he didn't mean it so she should just forget it ever happened. She decided to ignore the letter and sent another letter accepting the proposal.

I find this story incredibly amusing because I feel like it's something I would do. "Partygirl, will you marry me?" "Ummm, maybe." See ya.

So they got married. And then her mother died at age 53. My mother and father took in her younger sister, M2K's mom, who was in high school. A few years into this period is when my mother executed her most infamous act relived among my brother and me, she stopped M2K's mom from going to Woodstock. She took one look out the door at the overpacked car of psuedo-hippie's and said, "You're not going." We will never let her live his down. At this time, she was younger than I am today, but much older than her years. And that was that.

She didn't jump at getting married, nor did she jump at having kids. She didn't really want children. But my dad did and so they had us. Us and 1 before us who never made it, because every woman on my mother's side of the family loses her first - usually late-term or just after birth. Some type of curse, they believe, but it's not spoken about in our family. There are a lot of things we don't speak about.

But this is about the good, not the bad, so let's skip to the positive. From the day my eyes started registering shapes and figures, my mother started teaching me. Flashcards. I remember thinking flash cards were toys because she would make them into games.

"What's this letter, Partygirl?"

"C!"

"Right! 'C' is for cat...kitty cats and kitty cats do what?"

"Meow! Meow, meow, meow!"

We didn't have any kitty cats or anything like that because my mom didn't like pets either, but that's okay because we sure had fun making barnyard sounds and imitating animals.

From the time I could hold a pencil or crayon, I was punished by writing an essay. I think I've spoken about this before. When I was 3 or 4 my mom caught me playing with matches underneath the dining room table, lighting one after another, watching the fire until it licked at my little fingertips and I had to drop it on the carpet.

I was assigned an essay about why playing with matches was bad. I proceeded to write a several page essay with my crayons. When I was finished my mom reached out her hand for it and had me sit in the chair opposite me as she "read" it. She took what seemed like an enormous period of time to read each page, making very serious comments, like "interesting" or "insightful" or "good use of the anti-thesis to support your thesis" as I squinted my eyes trying to figure out the Greek she was peppering into her evaluation. She finally handed it back to me and asked me to read the essay aloud, and I did, explaining in four year old words why playing with matches was wrong.

The catch was that what I had written all over the paper were the only words I knew: "cat," "dog" and my name, yet read it like it was a comprehensive argument. And she never let on otherwise.

Growing up, the thing I remember most about my mom was that she always telling me that I could do anything; that I could be whatever I wanted to be. I get the sense now that she was pushing me because she wanted me to have the career and success she never had. But at the time, she always wanted me to understand that I had the world at my fingertips.

She routinely asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. In the beginning, I would say, "ballerina" and other little girl things like that but she would push me for more. "And what else, partygirl? You can be anything." And soon she was getting more specific answers. Doctor. Lawyer. Author. President of the United States. My mother convinced me that I could be President of the United States. Hell, she's still saying that. She believes it.

She checked my homework almost every night growing up. Even the "new math" which she would have too teach herself first to them check mine. She was my tutor until college. Everything I ever did for school was edited or recomputed by her.

When I wanted to try out for the basketball team in 6th grade, she took me up to the park every day after school and on weekends to practice my shooting.

When I competed in forensics, she drilled me for weeks. I would recite speech after speech, again and again and again until every word and phrase was perfect. I won a lot because of that.

She had me in college classes when I was in high school, which was unheard of in my area. She would administer and time me week after week on practice tests for the SAT's.

When I feel in love with Andrew Wyeth and bought my first print, she refused to let me take to someone else to matte and frame it. She took me to estate sales until we found a frame we liked and we went to a "do it yourself" place and spent a Saturday taking it apart, stripping it, restoring it, cutting it to size and matting the print. I've had that picture with me since we did that when I was 17 and it's still my most treasured possession.

When I was 16 and went into the hospital to get my tonsils out, she was sitting my my side in recovery when I woke up. She was there at night when they put me out again and there again in the morning when the medication wore off and I woke up. That reminds me of when my brother and I were little kids and would go to the eye doctor and get our eyes dilated and she would walk out with us screaming and crying because we couldn't see, one child's hand in each of her own and her looking incredibly stylish too boot - all 5' 9" of her in a Diane Von Furstenburg wrap dress calming pulling us toward the car as she reminded us to keep our eyes shut because it wasn't much further.

I remember the Halloween costumes she made for me every year that I trick or treated - we never had a costume out of the box. The extraodinary costumes for ballet and tap and jazz that she made me for me. The other girls would just have tutu's but mine had sassy sequin trims and streaming ribbons that zigzagged in the back and all of the other girls were so jealous that other moms would try to bribe my mom into making the costumes for their girls too. She refused. They were for me.

She made me both of my prom dresses from sketches that I did. I think she may have made Marnie2000's too. She made me the suit that I wore to my college graduation, which then became my first interview suit. A fabulous peach silk, people would stop me and ask me where I got it. When I got my first job after college, she made me this fabulous Jackie O. 50's style herringbone tweed with a Peter pan collar that I *still* wear and people *still* ask me where I got it.

My mother has been my teacher, my motivator, my nurse, my guide, my stylist, my devoted audience, my chauffeur and my coach. But most importantly, she was my Mom and she was there for me day and night, and for that, I say "Cheers, Mom!"

Oh, and thanks.

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