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I’ve read through my baby book more than once … usually in quiet moments, when I want to remember who I was before the world got noisy. Not just for the milestones, though those are there: first steps, first words, a lock of hair carefully taped inside. What moves me most is what’s between the lines … my mother’s handwriting.
It’s round and feminine, with little flourishes on the capital letters. But more than the shape of the letters is the feeling in them. Her words are tender, full of awe and gratitude. You can feel how deeply she loved being a mom. Not just in theory, not just because it was expected, but in practice. Every sentence has a glow to it, like she was writing with her whole heart.
What makes that love even more powerful is what came before.
Two years before I was born, my older sister Debby died at just nine months old. I didn’t grow up hearing much about her, but I always felt her absence in a quiet, unspoken way. That kind of loss … losing a child before they ever had a chance to grow up … leaves a scar. It changes a person. And yet, when I read the entries my mother wrote after I arrived, there’s no trace of fear or hesitation. No bitterness or guardedness. Just love. Pure, grateful, determined love. As if she’d made the decision to open her heart fully, despite the risk.
She was truly happy to have a child again. Not just happy … I think she felt whole again.
According to my mom, I was born somewhere between the clouds and a hospital. She always claimed I came into the world on a military plane, mid-flight, as she returned from the Philippines. Labor began in the air, and by the time the wheels hit the runway, I was already halfway here. They rushed her to a military base hospital to finish the delivery.
Maybe it’s part folklore, part fuzzy memory. But to me, it always felt poetic. Like I was born in motion. Suspended between worlds. Between grief and joy. Between a life lost and a new one beginning. Maybe that’s how she felt too … like we both crossed some invisible threshold together.
It was the start of something new for her. And for me, it was the beginning of a life shaped by a complicated kind of love … fierce in some moments, absent in others.
A Young Mother, Doing Her Best
Those early years with her were joyful in ways that are hard to describe but easy to feel, even now. I remember her as vibrant, full of life, and always in motion. She had this energy that made the room feel warmer. Not chaotic, not rushed … just present. She was there. Really there.
She sold Tupperware and Avon during those years, and she didn’t treat it like some dull side gig. She did it with flair. She’d load up her car with catalogs and samples, always smiling, always ready with a laugh or a story. She genuinely liked people. She enjoyed connecting, swapping stories over kitchen tables, turning strangers into friends. It wasn’t sales. It was relationship-building. And she was good at it. She also ran a local Brownie troop and volunteered at the PTA. There was always a certain amount of desperation in her entrepreneurship. She took it seriously and was always looking for a new way to bring in money, as if her life depended on it.
During her sales events, I learned to remain hidden and be quiet. She could become ruthless if I acted up or didn’t follow her direction. I essentially became her servant, carrying in the boxes and returning them to the car.
But her greatest gift to me was what she gave me at home.
She introduced me to books before I even understood the alphabet. She’d read to me with expression, her voice rising and falling, bringing characters to life as if they lived just down the street. I remember the thrill of learning to read on my own, the way it felt like unlocking a superpower … and it was her who handed me the key.
Mother loved books. Heavy maple bookshelves lined every wall in the living room, each shelf stuffed with encyclopedias, dictionaries, books, and countless women’s magazines. She passed that love on to me and my sister. They were the first thing she gave me that felt like a doorway. Dr. Seuss, then science, then history. She read until her voice went soft.
Science followed. Curiosity. Questions that most parents might have brushed off, she welcomed. I could ask why the sky was blue, how birds knew where to fly, or what made clocks tick … and she’d either explain it or help me find a book that did. Those moments … the bedtime stories, the library visits, the open-ended conversations … became the bedrock of who I am.
The library changed my life. She had to drag me from the car into the building the first time. I pulled hard on her arm, trying to get back to safety. But once I was inside, I was stunned into silence. Treasure. Shelves stretched from floor to ceiling, packed with more books than I’d imagined existed. I came home with a stack so heavy I could barely see over it. Every week after that, I’d ask when we were going back.
The Woman Behind the Baby Book
She wasn’t perfect. No mother is. But here’s where I have to be honest, because honesty is the only thing that makes a story worth telling.
My mother was a complicated woman. She was capable of real tenderness and genuine warmth. And she was also capable of looking at her bruised son’s face after his father had beaten him and saying, “Go clean yourself up. Dinner’s almost ready.” When I tried to tell her what happened, she cut me off: “Forget about it. Never happened.”
That was the other side of her. She was good at pretending. Protecting was something else.
I learned early that her love came with conditions. Her protection required keeping the peace above all else. When my father pressed a pillow over my face at nine months old, she appeared in the doorway, took me in her arms … and said, “Maybe he’s hungry.” No confrontation. No consequences. No acknowledgment of the danger. Just a quiet agreement to pretend it hadn’t happened.
She cycled through depressions that would last for days. She’d barely get out of bed, and my father would buy her things … new furniture, antiques, jewelry … to pull her back from wherever she’d gone. It worked for a few days, maybe a week. Then the fog rolled back in and he’d reach for his wallet again. I learned terrible lessons about money from watching this pattern. You get depressed, you buy something. Depression is solved by spending. Those lessons took years to unlearn.
Her tears were strategic. When I refused to go to prom, I found her crying in the dark living room later that night, shoulders shaking. It was her dream, I realized, a picture she’d held onto. And apparently, I was responsible for her happiness.
When my father told me that her suicide attempt was my fault … that all my noise, my questions, my everything had driven her to it … she never corrected the record. A ten-year-old boy stood in a hallway believing he was literally responsible for keeping his mother alive through the sheer act of not being himself. She let that stand.
She identified with me in ways I never knew what to make of. My interests felt like hers, my wins like hers, my losses too. When I changed, she felt betrayed. When the family business consumed everything, she stopped attending school events, stopped asking about homework, stopped being present in the ways that had made those early years so good. Everything became the gallery. I’m not sure my parents could even tell you the name of the high school I attended.
And yet. She was the woman who introduced me to books. Who drove me to the library every week. Who wrote in my baby book with that loopy, hopeful handwriting. Who made me lunch when I tried to run away from home instead of letting me go. Who laughed at my theatrical tantrums. Who built the foundation of curiosity and love of learning that became the bedrock of my entire career.
Both things are true. That’s what makes it complicated. That’s what makes it real.
I wrote the full story in my memoir, My Life in Crazytown: How I Turned ADHD Into My Superpower. It doesn’t spare anyone, including her.
What Mother’s Day Really Means
Mother’s Day didn’t begin as a Hallmark holiday. In fact, its original purpose would probably make today’s marketing teams squirm. Its roots are surprisingly raw … born not in celebration, but in grief, activism, and a fierce desire to honor real, often overlooked love.
The modern version of the holiday was shaped by Anna Jarvis in the early 1900s. After her mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, passed away in 1905, Anna began a campaign to create a national day of recognition. But this wasn’t just about warm fuzzies or floral arrangements. Her mother had been a peace activist and caregiver during the Civil War, organizing “Mother’s Day Work Clubs” to care for wounded soldiers and improve public health.
Anna wanted to honor that legacy … the selfless, sacrificial love that too often went unspoken. She envisioned a day of private reflection. A day to write a heartfelt letter. To sit quietly and feel gratitude. To remember a mother’s labor … not just in childbirth, but in life.
She succeeded. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed Mother’s Day into law as a national holiday. But Anna soon saw her vision unravel. By the 1920s, florists, card companies, and candy makers had seized the day. The sincerity was being drowned in pink ribbons and price tags.
Jarvis was furious. She publicly condemned the commercialization, boycotted events, and even filed lawsuits. She spent her final years fighting the very holiday she had created. In one bitter statement, she said a printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world.
Strong words. But hard to argue with.
Because at its core, Mother’s Day isn’t about performance … it’s about presence. Not about perfection, either. Just about remembering the women who shaped us. The complicated ones. The ones who showed up and the ones who sometimes didn’t. The ones who loved us through it and the ones whose love came wrapped in conditions we didn’t understand until decades later. Whether they’re still here to hug or only reachable in memory, the day is for them.
It’s a chance to put down the noise and sit for a moment in that quiet truth: we are here because of her. Whatever else she was, she gave us that.
And that alone is worth honoring … with or without flowers.
The Numbers Behind the Love
According to Pew Research, 88% of mothers say that being a parent is the most important or one of the most important aspects of who they are. Young adults overwhelmingly say they turn to their mothers for advice and emotional support … more so than their fathers. According to the National Retail Federation, Americans are expected to spend over $33 billion on Mother’s Day this year, and 84% of adults plan to celebrate.
That might be overkill, but it shows something important: we know moms matter. Even when the relationship is complicated. Even when the love came with fine print. Even when we didn’t always see it for what it was.
So Today …
Whether your mom is still here, far away, or a bittersweet memory like mine … take a moment. Not the commercial moment. A real one. The kind Anna Jarvis fought for.
Call her if you can. Write her if you can’t. Remember something she taught you … especially the small things, like how to fold a shirt, treat a stranger, or find joy in ordinary days. Or remember the complicated things too, because those shaped you just as much.
My mother passed away in 2018. I carry the full picture now … the baby book with its hopeful handwriting and the hallway where I learned my existence was too much for her. The library trips that built my love of learning and the kitchen where she told me to forget what my father had done. The woman who sold Tupperware with flair and the woman who used her tears to get what she wanted.
I don’t need her to be perfect to honor her. I need her to be real. And she was. Flawed, complicated, sometimes wonderful, sometimes absent when it mattered most … she was real. The books she gave me became the foundation of everything I do. That’s a gift that outlasts all the rest.
Today I remember my mother as she actually was: a woman who could fill a baby book with love and still look away when her son needed her most. Both things lived inside her. Both things shaped me. And honestly, understanding that is more valuable than any greeting card version of the story.
That’s enough.
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