Thank you, Mom.

From an early age, our mothers teach us to be thankful. And so on this Mother’s Day, we will show our thanks in different ways. Those of us who live close to our moms will be stopping by to visit. Some of us who live further away will be calling our moms to spend some time with them on the phone. Others will be remembering and missing their mothers who are no longer with us.

We’ll all be on Facebook wishing our moms and all of the other moms that we know a Happy Mother’s Day. We’ll say I love you and Have a great day. But that’s not what our moms want to hear. There’s two words we should be saying to our mothers today. Thank you.

We don’t say those words enough. At least, I don’t say them enough. So, I want to say them now.

Thank you, Mom.

Thank you for everything you did for me while growing up. Thank you for the sacrifices you made.

Thank you for cheering me up when they wouldn’t let me start kindergarten for a whole year because I didn’t pass their tests, including a check to see if I could walk across a balance beam. I didn’t realize how often kids would have to travel across balance beams in school but apparently it was a big deal that I couldn’t. Thank you for telling me on the drive home that I was still very smart.

Thank you for making that next year at home special.

Thank you for teaching me how to read before I had to learn in school.

Thank you for being proud of me when they put me in gifted classes. Thank you for not being disappointed when they realized they had made a big mistake and pulled me out a week later.

Thank you for taking the side of my teachers when I’d get in trouble and not blindly defending me just because I was your son. I don’t think that happens much nowadays.

Thank you for limiting my television time and for playing games with me.

Thank you for trading in your new Mustang for a family car when I started to get older. I knew how hard that must have been when I traded in my new Mustang for the same exact reason.

Thank you for being a stay-at-home mom when it would have been easier to work. Now that I have kids of my own, I can only imagine how difficult it must have been to deal with me all day long.

Thank you for never saying that you had to “deal with me.”

Thank you for saying Yes when I was 6 years old and I asked you in the kitchen if my Teddy would go to heaven with me. It made me feel safe. I don’t know why I still remember that, but I do.

Thank you for sitting through a four hour sales pitch for a condo on the beach so that you and Dad could get that free Atari 1600 as my present one Christmas because you couldn’t afford to buy it.

Thank you for convincing Dad to take us with him whenever he would go out of town on business so we could spend more time together as a family.

Thank you for taking me to church and Sunday school. It was inconvenient but changed the trajectory of my life.

Thank you for taking me to Boy Scout meetings.

Thank you for putting me in piano lessons. And tap dancing lessons. And Tennis lessons. I hated all of them but they kept me out of trouble and taught me the importance of trying new things.

Thank you for having the school announce over the PA system for everyone to hear that you would not be picking me up that day because I was disrespectful to you. Thank you for making me walk an hour and a half home, through some pretty sketchy neighborhoods, with a heavy backpack full of books, my lunch box in one hand, and a trombone in the other. It was the perfect response.

I never did that again.

Thank you for teaching me how to drive. On a street with no cars. Where I couldn’t hurt anyone.

Thank you for giving me your car to use when I couldn’t afford one of my own.

Thank you for making me continue to drive that car after I wrecked it. That taught me to value the things I had and to be more careful.

Thank you for believing me when I told you I was out with my friends when I really was.

Thank you for not believing me when I told you I was out with my friends when I really wasn’t.

Thank you for believing in me.

Thank you for holding me accountable to paying my credit card debt myself and not bailing me out.

Thank you for working part-time to help support me when I first went off to college.

Thank you for not paying for everything so I’d have to work part-time, too.

Thank you for convincing me to visit my grandmother the Thanksgiving that we decided to take a road trip together. I didn’t know that would be the last time I’d ever get to talk to her here on Earth.

Thank you for still giving me unsolicited advice and putting up with me when I don’t want to hear it. One day, hopefully many years from now, I know that I’ll have a problem and I will think to myself I wonder what Mom would say about this?

Thank you for not judging me when I dated girls who were clearly not the one for me.

Thank you for loving my wife like the daughter you always wanted.

Thank you for loving my sons just as much as you love me.

Thank you, Mom. I love you. Happy Mother’s Day.