For My Mother, Who Gave Me Everything

I considered a typical social media post, with photos, kind words, and well wishes, but we take a limited amount of photos together, the important ones you've all likely seen, and they don't much matter to you anyway. No, the person that my mother is deserves something more than that, something more like her. So on her birthday (I won't mention which one it is, though she has never truly been vain enough to care), I'd like to share a few of the reasons that, if not for my mother, I would be significantly...less. 

She gave me beautiful stories. 

She read them; she flipped their pages; she cracked their spines, but it was more than that. When my mother read you a story, it ceased to be just the words on the page. She did something that I don't know how to describe with any other word than...magic. When my mother read you a story, you somehow left the comfort of the living room carpet, the back seat of the old blue suburban, or the after-recess confines of your school desk. When my mother read you a story, the dragons breathed fire you could feel on your cheeks, and the mermaids sang songs you could hear so clearly at the bottom of that lake. When my mother read you a story, it came alive. She gave me those stories, so that I could take them into my own world, so that I could creates worlds of my own. 

She gave me her eyes, her freckles, a hint of her smile, and that sharp Dugan chin. 

Each of my sisters have pieces of our mother, perhaps even more than I do. But I will always be grateful that every time I look into a mirror, the eyes that look back at me are hers. "You look like your mother" is a compliment I only get prouder to receive. 

She gave me the fortitude to always get back up. 

My mother is not, nor has she ever been, a weak woman. She is fierce; she is bold; she is redoubtable. As a daughter, I have witnessed a number of, but certainly not all, of my mother's struggles. In my experience, no matter what that struggle may have been, I have never known her to lay down or roll over. I have known her, always and without fail, to fight through, fight back, fight into or out of. My mother is, and has always been, a force to be reckoned with. My sisters, myself, have developed a similar skill set - because our mother taught us how. 

She armed me with every tool I might need to win an argument. 

Someone once told me that I have a quiet air about me until I've been wronged, and then it's something of a formidable, anticipating silence. That comes from my mother. She's more of a master at it than I am, though she's had a bit more practice. Plus she has the (somehow genetic) Dugan jaw slide in her repertoire. I've yet to perfect that. 

She gave me a unique fondness for The Beach Boys. 

We did almost nothing in our house as children without a Beach Boys record/cassette/CD in the background. We decorated the Christmas Tree to the surfed up versions of classic Christmas carols; we dusted the living room to Sloop John B; we danced in the bathroom to Help Me Rhonda. If I'm having a bad day, or a nostalgic day, or sometimes just when I'm cleaning the kitchen - I put on The Beach Boys; though now it streams through my phone instead of crooning from thousand pound living-room record player that currently resides at my sister's house. 

She gave me permission to exist loudly. 

My mother is outspoken; she is passionate; she battles for the things that she believes in. I value so much of my independence, my fierce drive to defend the things and the people that I love, and I wouldn't have those things had my mother not led by example. I have a voice, and because of my mother, I do not fear my ability to use it. 

She gave me recipes and soft afternoons on the back porch in the summer sun. She gave me singing loudly to the same song over and over again in the car on the way to school and prayers before bedtime. She gave me lectures when I needed them and calm discussions when I couldn't make a decision. She gave me reason and forethought, serenity and power, competition and grace. She gave me faith, beauty, laughter, adoration, love. She gave me everything. So, on her birthday, I want to give her the best gift that I know how to give: a set of words. 

Happy birthday, Mom. Thank you for giving me...everything. 

Love, 

Kate