My Mom

For my first regular post of my re-vamped blog, I'm going to write about one of my favorite people--my mom. She's a pretty amazing woman, and it's hard to even know where to start.

My beautiful mother

My mom always considered my dad the "smart" one because he was a nuclear engineer, but when she was younger, she studied Latin...for fun. She has always loved language, and she wanted to know more about the roots of words. And Dad may have studied higher-level math, but Mom can do fractions in her head. (I on the other hand, make frequent use of my calculator app.)

Mom is also so talented. She's good at music and baking, and she has top-notch sewing skills. She never wanted the stress of running a business, but my siblings and I were always the best dressed on Halloween. She's definitely the reason I love costumes as much as I do. Then, when it came time for proms and weddings, we got much nicer gowns than we could have afforded otherwise. In fact, I got a gown that just didn't exist in stores when I got married because I wanted long sleeves, but I also wanted a fairly contemporary style, and almost everything in dress shops was sleeveless the year I got married. Gowns that had sleeves at all were usually a bit out of date, and long sleeves were very nearly non-existent. So I showed my mom a picture of the style I wanted and told her how I wanted the top to be, and she created this:

Mom also made my veil, and she made this cloak so that I could have my outdoor pictures without freezing to death and still be pretty.

And this is the woman herself.

But the best thing about my mom is how loving and giving she is. Like many people, she sacrificed a lot for our family. She gave up her nursing career to raise her children, and she did it on her own for months at a time because my dad was in the Navy for the first twenty years of his career. She read to us and took care of us when we were sick. She did her best to encourage our goals and prepare us for adulthood.

But she didn't stop with her family. She was always trying to help other people too. I remember my mother giving small amounts of work to a man she knew was down and out. He was a drug addict and had a record, but that's part of why she tried to help him because she knew it was hard for him to get a job, and he had kids. There was a teen girl who lived with us for a while because she needed a place to stay. And she has always helped members of our church and other friends by cooking meals, giving rides, babysitting, sewing... anything she could do. I remember my mom telling me when I was a teen that one of the people she most admired was also one of the most kind people she had ever known. I internalized that, and it became my goal to be that kind. It will be a lifelong process, but I'm working on it.

Now go and sow some goodness!

Bonus: Look at my cute parents!