The Measure of a Mother

If one were to quantify how good or effective a parent is, you could use some standard metrics like hugs per day or skinned knees mended or embarrassing stories told to future prom dates. But I have a totally different system – defiantly unconventional but arguably more effective.

A parent is as good inversely proportional as the child is bad.
By this metric – my mother was a saint.

From throwing my brothers hat off a train, to peeing on a plant in preschool, arguing with my soccer coach to the point they quit, throwing ketchup out a bus window or even throwing a party when the parents were on vacation would all qualify my mother as amazing.
But what is even more amazing is how she let me fail.
As an adult, I have failed spectacularly. And some might say this is a result of poor upbringing. Which is why I am setting the record straight. It is precisely because I was allowed to fail – to live as I chose, and then to live with those choices, that she was amazing. Treating me as an adult when I was an adult allowed me to form a new relationship with my mother. It gave me the opportunity to see how much of a jerk I was after my father died.
It allowed me to pay for the financial mistakes of my college years in the years to come. It allowed me to – at the moment when I failed the hardest – to take responsibility for what I had done, and for what was to come for the rest of my life.
I was given the knowledge to be an adult. To live, laugh, fail, cry and love – all with her wisdom to back up my new experiences.

I can only say I’m sorry so many times… but I can never say thank you enough.