Describe Your Mom in One Word

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Quick! Can you describe your mom in one word? 

For several weeks, anticipating Mother’s Day, I’ve had the thought to describe my mom in one word.  All sorts of words come to mind:  loving, pretty, sweet, agile, awesome cook (oops, that’s two words). 

The one word that has stuck with me is fun. Yep, my mom is fun!   Whenever I’m around my mom, it doesn’t take long until I’m laughing until tears run down my face.

My sister, Melinda, and I were fortunate to spend an entire week with our mom and dad a few months ago with no grandkids or great-grands to steal all of the attention. 🙂  She cooked all of our favorite foods and it was all about us.  That doesn’t happen very often once you have kids and your kids have kids.

Here are some fun facts about my mom:

1. Christmas is her thing!
She always made Christmas pure magical for my siblings and me. (She even taught me the correct way to use “I” and “me” in a sentence). Most people get it wrong. Just saying. Once she hung, I mean, Santa hung our new watches in the tree and we had to play the hot/cold game forever until we found them. 

2.  My mom is the hardest working person I know.

I’m convinced that’s the reason she stays so young!  My mom and dad still mow their own lawn in town and the acres of grass at their farm. 

3.  My mom, at 84, has very few wrinkles.

Please, God, I pray I inherited her beautiful skin gene, pretty please!

4.  My mom is the best cook in the world.

No one can fry fish, chicken or make biscuits like she can. I don’t even try. Here’s her famous biscuit recipe!  You can find her best-in-the-world fried fish here!

5.  She still goes deer hunting in her condo deer stand.  

We call it her condo because she has it all tricked out with rugs, etc.  I tried to climb up the stairs once and got dizzy. Enough said.  

6.  She loves God with all of her heart.

That should have been number one. 

7.  When I had surgery a few years ago, she came from GA to SC to cook for me and wait on me hand and foot.

We all want our mama when we don’t feel good, right?

8.  She spoils her grandkids and great grandkids and we let her.

They all love Grandma Helen.  My grandsons fondly refer to her as “old grandma Helen.”

9.  We’ve never been able to get anything by her.

But we still tried.  Once, when I was in high school, my mom and dad had gone to Atlanta for the weekend.  My sister, Melinda, and I decided we would have a small party while they were away.  Well, word gets around in a small, small town . . .  and before long that little get-together had morphed into a huge, crazy party.  I even cooked hamburgers in the oven and they shrunk up to look like tiny sausage patties!   Yes, we got caught. Why did my older brother have to show up?  Party Pooper!  Yes, we were grounded for life.  

Another time, a friend, my sister and I decided it would be cool to stay out all night and not have a curfew.  So we tried to pull the ole “We’re staying the night with our friend routine.”  Busted.  Mom found us. And by the way, it wasn’t fun staying out past curfew because the town was dead as a doorknob.  We couldn’t get anything by our mom.  So I won’t even bore you with all the other times.   

She was my PE teacher in middle school, so I had to be extra good.  She never missed any of my basketball games and was always there to watch me cheer (from 1st grade through high school)!  She was the official scorekeeper for years at my high school basketball games.  She was always there.  

My mom pierced my ears when I was in third grade and when I went back to school with my new piercings, all of my friends wanted their’s done, so she pierced theirs, too.  (This was not for the faint-of-heart because she used 2 cubes of ice and a “sterilized” needle.)  You can read about that here if you’re brave enough!

10. Her favorite hobby is fishing.

Reading is a close second.  I could bait a hook before I was 5 and to this day, I can grab a cricket, worm, and even a shrimp, and bait a hook in a flash. She taught me how to pick up a catfish correctly when I was in first grade so that I wouldn’t get finned. And she always takes her great grands fishing in their pond when we visit in the spring and summer. 

I do have to say that she prefers salt water fishing these days and spends a few weeks each year at St. George Island as happy as can be because she’s in her element. My siblings and I inherited her love of the beach. 

I could go on and on and on. All of my friends always loved to have slumber parties at my house because my mom is so cool. And fun. She’s just plain out fun!

Happy Mother’s Day, mom!

Update: I wrote this post months ago. Little did I know that my very active mom would have a massive heart attack and pass from this life to her heavenly home on the day before Mother’s Day (yesterday – May 7th). It was unexpected. It was sudden.  And I’m having another breakdown as I write these words.

Thankfully, I was holding her hand and telling her I loved her and what a great mom she is when she passed.

Yesterday I received the greatest compliment ever when someone told me that I looked just like my mom. I never dreamed that I would spend this Mother’s Day without my mom.

Mom, I love you to the moon and back . . . and beyond.