Reason #113:

The Valentine’s Day she thought she was getting my dad a compilation CD of nice love songs for the two of them to listen to together, that was actually a CD of break-up songs called “Love Stinks” and opened with the track of the same name.

Reason #112:

She loved to eat at Chevy’s on the American River because it had a great view and was along the water. But what she REALLY loved to do was take the River Otter Taxi (a teeny boat) TO the Chevy’s on the river.

It was a touristy thing to do; most people that lived in Sacramento just drove to Chevy’s to eat, and even though she had been on that River Otter Taxi tons of times, she always wanted to do it. Always.

So when someone was visiting town, we may as well have just greeted them at the airport and headed straight for that River Otter Taxi. Doing anything else first would have just been biding time.

Reason #111:

She made her house a home.

She really loved her home, loved puttering around cleaning it, organizing it, readying it for people to come over. And she did it well.

Today I’m moving out of her home for the second time. I never thought there would be a second time in the first place; my senior year in high school I would have laughed at the idea if I hadn’t known why I was coming back, because I was so eager to be out and adult. But I’ve been living here for more than three months, and later this afternoon I leave for L.A., then eventually Europe. It’s a sad day; it sort of feels like losing her again. This home is very much her. I can see her on the walls and hear her in the music and smell her in the pillows and feel her in the backyard.

These months were terrible and wonderful and terrible and wonderful.

I really loved living here again. And I really love that I loved it.

Reason #110:

I liked listening to her play the piano. She would always downplay how good she was, but it was nice to sit and listen to her play.

I was not, however, a fan of the couple of years she made me take piano lessons, and do piano recitals alongside seven year old girls, but let’s let bygones be bygones, shall we, mom?

She was calming and comforting to listen to play. The week she passed, my dad came home and she was playing the piano after a very long time of not having played it, and he took a picture of her. It’s the last one we have.

I’m not quite sure why, but that’s not the picture I’m posting today. It’s just not.

But man, I liked seeing her at that piano.

Reason #109:

We lived three minutes from her school, she worked there for twenty years, and occasionally she would still get lost on the way there.

Reason #108:

Earlier this year, while my mom was going through a really bad round of chemo, I had to get some wisdom teeth pulled in New York.

It was a pretty routine procedure, but that didn’t matter to my mom. She called every single day to check up on me, told me she wished she could be there to comfort me, and she even sent me a package with things to eat and do while I was at home the day of the procedure.

When she would call to check in on me, I could hear how terribly she was feeling herself, and it broke my heart.

She was a whole kind of mother.

Reason #107:

Because it is November 1st, and if she were still alive, there would already have been Christmas music playing throughout the entire house when I woke up.

Reason #106:

The Halloween she dressed up like a witch, decorated the house, and made a theme dinner with a menu where every dish had a “spooky” name.

Reason #105:

The walks we would go on together every night at sunset during her last two months.

Sometimes she was talkative and we would laugh about something or she would ask about how things were going with my writing. And sometimes she was quiet after a long day, forcing herself to get some exercise despite having a body that just didn’t want to anymore. On those nights, we would just walk silently, holding hands. Then at the end, as we would walk back up our driveway, she would say, “Thank you”.

When I think of her now lately, I think first of these walks.

They were very important to me.

Reason #104:

She kept a small TV in her bathroom where she got ready each morning so that she could watch The Today Show. She liked seeing New York and knowing I was in there somewhere, and would check up on the weather I was having on any given day.

When I first moved to New York, she also watched in case I “passed by on the way to work one day”, and even though I told her I don’t work in Rockefeller Plaza and I don’t begin work at 5am, she kept looking anyway, just in case.

I should have walked by one morning.

Coulda, woulda, shoulda.

Reason #103:

She was incredibly, bizarrely good at “Wheel of Fortune”.

But if we ever happened to watch it together, and I would guess the puzzle first (which was rare), she would give me a look like, “Why would you do that to me?”.

I was meant to watch, not participate. And I needed to get that straight.

Reason #102:

Every single time there was a birthday cake, she would use those trick candles that keep relighting themselves.

And every single time she would get so excited with herself when they would relight.

We got so used to this routine, that we would ask her, “Are these going to relight when we blow them out?” and she would just squeal, “I don’t knoooow!!” and stare intently at the candles. When they would relight on cue, she would laugh, act surprised, and say, “Oh no! What’s happening?!”

Reason #101: My mom’s best friend, Bonnie, said this when I had dinner with her a week ago.

My mom would never laugh AT someone in a mean way, but if there was a pushy customer in line at the store or someone who was too stressed out or something, she had a great way of just laughing at them instead of allowing herself to be seriously affected by them.

Oh MAN, could she laugh.

Reason #100:

She was a good hugger. They were long and felt like a hug, not like some where the person is just getting in and out.

In the last couple of months, they were a little different. They were even longer, and she would lay her head on my shoulder while we hugged, as if she was glad to rest on me for a little bit.

Another reason I love my mother is that I’m on #100 today, and I haven’t even broken a sweat.

Reason #99:

When I had time off during middle school, I would often go help out in my mom’s kindergarten classroom. One St. Patrick’s Day, my mom thought it would be fun for her class to have cereal and green milk to celebrate, like she did with us kids.

She also thought it would be fun for the kids to see ME drinking the green milk; then she wanted me to sneak away into the bathroom and spray my hair green, as if the leprechauns had gotten to me. I did, and when I came back, the kids loved it.

All except one kid, Ryan Lewis, who was TERRIFIED. I don’t remember if there was crying involved, but I think there might have been. He was so shaken up that my mom had me go over to his house after school with the green rinsed out of my hair to prove to him that I wasn’t slowly transforming into a leprechaun.

I saw him at my mom’s service and he remembers his terror to this day. I love this memory. Aside from the accidentally terrifying a small child, my mom did a pretty good job of mixing things up in the classroom.