It's easy to hate my mother - growing up she never let me sleepover at friends' houses, no matter if they called her and promised I'd only eat healthy food. The only sport that ever remotely called to me was volleyball but her response was "you can't risk your fingers you need to play an instrument to get into an Ivy League college (forget that "Ivy League" is a sports reference). It was easy to hate how she sat next to me a ruler while I cried at the piano, or how she refused to let me help her wash dishes as a break from my extra credit homework. Or when she stood by my bed screaming and holding the trash can that I vomited into while my dad laughed and said "stop yelling! She learned her lesson, she won't drink tequila again!" (If only I was that smart). All that complaining aside - and it is legitimate complaining - my mother was/is/will always be my model everything. She worked - her ass off. She screamed - her throat hoarse. She spanked - my butt blue. She loved - every piece of me, even the ungrateful bits. I could have had no one more devoted, more believing, more supportive, more fanatic. No one else will knit toddler leg warmers just to be mortified as I do my first ice skating competition w my thumb on my mouth (the ENTIRE routine). No one else will stay up all night sewing curtains for a home I will leave in 12 months to move to China. No one else will rip fabric off her own couch because it's the only one I like enough to upholster my bedroom chair... which I will move out of in another 12 months to come back to the US. There are people who love their moms, and there is me - who never appreciates my mom out loud, because she has taught me that this is the bare minimum, that this is everything a mother should do, that this is no big deal. But it's not nothing - it's amazing. It's everything, it's what made me successful, an executive, a leader, a caring manager. Every thing I do is thanks to her - happy Mother's Day to everyone trying to replicate what she did, it's the best we can do. Young De Charette

May 15, 2017 at 11:31AM via Facebook