Tuesday Tribute: My Mom

First my first Tuesday Tribute, I thought I'd do a nice tribute...to my mom.

I choose my mom because who better to pay tribute to than the person who gave you life.

And not only did she give me life, but she has stood beside me every step of the way. Even when I didn't deserve it.

She raised me to know right from wrong. To be a good person. To be independent and strong.

And I know I disappointed her during my teenage years. Boy, was I a handful.

I remember when she learned that at the age of 17 that I was going to be a mother myself. She was so disappointed in me. She'd had such high hopes for my future - college, a wedding, then children.

In a split second, I was destroying all her dreams.

I had never seen my mother so devastated. I thought she would never forgive me.

Five months later, I gave her a grandson. While her hopes had been crushed, you could never tell the way she held her grandson and looked at him.

And each and every time I have had a child (four times in all), she has been there by my side; she has been my strength in the most difficult of parental situations. She has loved her grandchildren without conditions, even when they too have disappointed her with choices they made (well, the oldest two - the only ones old enough to be held accountable).

After having my first child, she once told me that once you are a parent, you are a parent for life. I'm not quite sure that at 18 I understood that, but I do now. Because even as life hands me lemons, she is there to remind me how to make lemonade.

Yet Another Jay and Deb Production.