Happy Mother's Day!

Take the day to be kind to the person who brought you into this world, the person who raised you, who helped raise you, who was there for you when a lot of others had other things going on, who loved you even though you were someone who for a moment, a day, a month, a year, most all of your life, only a mother could love. Be kind to your mother, to her memory, even if she wasn't perfect and johnny-on-the-spot like all the mothers on television in the 60s and 70s that you later read had drug and alcohol problems that may well have been brought on by playing characters that don't exist in real life. Be kind even if you are too young still, or still too stupid, to realize that you are far from perfectly easy on the nerves yourself. Understand that as lame as it may sound, she, Mom, probably did the best she could given who she was, the forces animating her, and what she'd lived through, what she was sorting out at the time, the things going on inside her while you at the same time had things going on inside you that blinded you to the things that were going on inside her, and so you can be certain that for much of that time you were driving her nuts with things that you now understand, or will soon, or may one day, we all hope, were thoughtless and inconsiderate and at the very least no less maddening for being understandable, because you were young, you didn't know any better, you were doing the best you could, which is how you, we, all of us, cut ourselves slack for all the heartbreak and crazy and totally unnecessary we visited on our mothers' nerves and so today and every day forward we do the same for them, as best we can and are able, given everything that is going on, inside and out, given imperfections, character-flaws, a disturbing number of which are probably genetic, but still, be kind, show compassion, show the love.

Happy Mother's Day!