I went home for Mother's Day this weekend. Do you know that I have never missed a holiday with my family? Meaning, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Mother's Day, Father's Day and Fourth of July, I always spend with my family.

I've noticed as an adult that a lot of people don't do that. I mean beyond the transplants in NYC with family far away, I have friends with immediate family in New Jersey who simply don't go home.

I don't get that. That would just not happen in my family. And it's funny, because my mother and I don't really connect in any way, yet I still fulfill this obligation to my family.

I thought about that this weekend when I thought about all of my friends who don't lift a finger to haul ass home and see their moms.

I asked myself, why do I do this? I don't want to go home - I saw my parents last weekend and I'll see them again in two weeks. That will kick off 3 months of seeing them every weekend. So why, with all of this, am I scrambling to make it home for Mother's Day?

Am I coward? Afraid to step up to my parents and declare my independence and do my own thing? Nah, that's not it. Hell, I smoke in front of my parents and pretty much everyone I know shits their pants at the thought of that (like their parents don't know).

When I thought about it, I realized that I do it because I know that my parents won't be around forever. As completely foreign as that thought is to me, I know it's the truth. I know that one day, Mother's Day or Father's Day or Thanksgiving or Christmas will roll around and I will wish with all of my heart that my mother or father was still around to go to.

And when that day comes, I want to be able to know without question that there wasn't one single time that I could have been there and I wasn't.

Family is important. They are a part of you, however much they may irritate you or anger you. Whatever your differences are with them, generational or philosophical, they are your family.

And when they start arguments at your friends Mother's Day BBQ filled with Republicans by snidely stating that if Clinton had been a Catholic President no one would have been outraged at his sexual behavior in the White House, really all you can do is chime in that Americans are too puritanical about sex and use the Mitterand funeral as an example of a world filled with adults as America still acts like a child. Because you're family.

And if they're really good, they'll further back you up by asking "And what about Roosevelt!? He had absolutely no discretion, but that was a different time."

And because you're family, you'll all laugh together at that. Because you're family, you know that you are right. And everyone else who is not in the family is...well, they're just plain wrong.

Unless they agree, and then they're family. We have to grow the tree.

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