My mother really deserves a medal or some sort of trophy.  At 20, she seemed to have settled into the life she had always wanted... her marriage was still fresh and she had just given birth to her second baby boy.  But life is a waterfall, and change came quick.  She became an all-too-common American statistic: a single mother of two boys, wandering back and forth between minimum-wage jobs and welfare.  But my mother was a lot more than that.

I remember how she taught us to read when we were only 2 and 3.  How she'd walk to the library with us, or take city buses.  I remember one time we rode the city bus to see a fireworks display, and when it was over, the buses had stopped running and we didn't even have the money for a ride home.  I remember turning on the stove when the heat went out.  And I remember her coming to bat for me more times than I can count.

One time I went crazy in New Orleans.  Suffered a manic episode during Mardi Gras, which is about the worth thing you can do when you are bipolar.  She drove all the way down in a van to New Orleans to snatch me up and bring me back home.  A few years later I went crazy again in Vegas.  She did it again.

There is much more to say.  I love my mom.  She taught me pretty much everything I know.  And since she doesn't wear jewelry and she's allergic to perfume, I figured I'd give her this.