BIRTHDAY YAY

TODAY

is my mom’s birthday. My mom is a really cool person who also runs a blog about being short and being a mom. (My blog is about being creative and broke. Probably like a good number of students my age. But that is beside the point.) My mom is having a birthday! Yay!

There are a lot of things I wish everyone could know about my mom. For one, she really is less than four feet and eleven inches. My best friend got to meet her last December on our memorable ThankChristGivingMas trip, and the first thing he said to her was “Wow she’s so short.” So I mean I’m really not kidding when I say she only comes up to my shoulders when I don’t wear shoes.

SECOND thing you should know: My mom is the toughest cookie I know. I don’t use that phrase lightly either. And I also don’t know a bunch of weak cookies. I’m constantly surrounded by tough cookies and some of my cookie friends are tough because of different reasons and because of different horrible and stressful things they have dealt with. I know a slew of tough cookies. My mom out-toughs them all. My mom is constantly handling all kinds of situations that I can’t even imagine having to put up with, and amazing enough she hasn’t gotten hard. All this toughening she has been through has made her tough and soft. My mom is one of the most loving people ever. I’ve never really known someone who is so willing to drop everything and help someone else. Sometimes she just does it for no reason? I don’t know how she does that.

THIRD thing is kind of just a funny thing about my mom. When she was my age and younger she hated kids. I’m living with her parents right now, and I have heard how many times she hated kids probably about 5 out of 7 days every week I’ve been here. It’s great. I was born sort of out of a blessed accident? I’ve talked about my birthing story (here) so apparently she followed through for the 9-month pregnancy, and I’m here now, so she further followed through with 18 years of raising me. NOT ONLY did she have me and put up with raising me, (my dad helped) I have FIVE younger siblings and she has done an incredible-awesome-fantastic job raising them. (So that’s why I’ve never answered the question “how many kids do you want?” Because I’m afraid I’ll just get kicked really hard by my answer.)

FOURTH: My mom read to me from the time I was very little up through high school. I mean you could argue that really by the time I was in 8th or 9th grade my mom was reading to my younger siblings, and I just happened to be in the room, but you would be wrong. I strongly believe that has thoroughly shaped my entire life. Books have hugely influenced the styles I’ve liked, the stories I enjoy, and the way I interact with the world.

FIFTH: My mom homeschooled me and two of my brothers up through high school. My younger three siblings have gotten into the public school system a lot sooner due to her health and just life circumstances, you know? So for the first few years of my life, basically all of my elementary school period, my mom was teaching three children in three different grades at the same time. It’s incredible. My mom is incredible. So in this extensive schooling, she was always super hands-on. We would go on roadtrips and visit museums and libraries to discuss things. We spent a bunch of time reading, like I mentioned in FOUR. We spent a lot of time doing science projects and she would show us cool things and we’d go to cool places (part of that was my dad too, but I’m talking about mom right now.)

SIXTH: I have found out in the last few years the state of my mom’s health over the course of my childhood. Growing up I never realized my mom was as sick as she was. My mom was diagnosed with Non-Hogdkin’s Lymphoma sometime a couple years ago. Before that, doctors had misdiagnosed her as something. I could think of the word typing earlier sentences, but it came to the time to type the word of the misdiagnosed illness and it went out of my head. Sorry. Anyways, as a result of her many illnesses, and symptoms of such illnesses, was constant pain apparently? I’m not entirely sure, because my mom almost never complained. The few times she did complain was when we had been kind of pills, and stuff was going on that stressed her out. So I mean, totally reasonable times to complain about crippling amounts of pain. My mom would spend a couple hours every day napping to help manage the pain and her body so she could still teach us as well as she did.

So I started writing this Sunday night and kind of wrote it on and off until just now when I posted it. My mom is really great, and I love her a ton, and I’m so lucky to have her in my life.