Tell Us About Your Mom

Mother’s Day is this Sunday, so I thought it would be fitting for today’s Moms Talk to, well, talk about our moms. I’ll start it off, but I’d love to hear your stories and memories as well. Please share them in the comments section below. Or if you want to write longer, send me an e-mail at becca.manning@patch.com, and I’ll tell you all about our fabulous new blog tool, where you can write about any topic that interests you, whether it be moms, motherhood, childcare, education, politics or otherwise.

Now, about my mom …

My mom, Mary, is a teacher. She has taught elementary school, mainly third and fourth grade, for more than 30 years, and as she is quick to share on her Facebook posts, she is just 18 days away from retirement. She plans to come see me (and hang out by the beach) as often as possible. (She and my dad live in Ohio, where I grew up.)

As a teacher, my mom has been “mom” to many more kids than just my sister Chris, brother Mikie and I. She has educated more than 30 classes of students over the years, and as any teacher will tell you—there’s a lot more than just academics going on in a classroom. Year after year, I have watched her carefully and lovingly organize her classroom into a welcoming environment for her students. I have seen her worry about them, laugh at their jokes, smile at the funny things they say and do and stress out every single Sunday night when she realizes she still has a massive stack of papers to grade and the weekend is quickly running out. I have shared my mother with hundreds of kids over the years, but I don’t mind. After all, she loves what she does—and she taught me to do the same—and the world can never have enough people like that, especially at the head of a classroom.

My mom is a talented gardener, an artist of plants, pathways and mulch. She is an avid reader who, like me, has a number of books piled around her chair or by the bed (or in the bathroom) at all times. She is a goofy dancer (also like me) but a great cook (not at all like me), and when her children come home to visit, she is always eager to make us a delicious dinner.

She is also an amazing grandmother to my two-year-old nephew, Spencer, particularly when it comes to getting him to eat his green beans (they have some sort of barter system going on involving a bean for a spoonful of pudding). I am constantly impressed by the amount of energy she has when it comes to caring for Spence while his mom, my sister, is trying to finish two master’s degrees (our parents also encouraged us to be high-achievers).

By the way, my sister is a fabulous mom, too.

When I was a kid, my mother and I had our Secret Chocolate Soda Stops—a special tradition for just us two, which involved, as you might gather from the name, stopping in at a department store restaurant in our local mall to get old-fashioned chocolate sodas during shopping trips. It made not being able to find the right pants so much more palatable.

Now that I am an adult, I am happy to call my mother my friend—both on Facebook and in real life. (She’s the perfect competitor when it comes to FB Scrabble.) When you’re a kid, you don’t know how important that kind of relationship can be. When you’re older, you can’t imagine it any other way.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. I love you!

So, Needham: What's so great about your mom?