Reasons I Love My Mother

Reason #352:

I took a picture of this picture on my Aunt Beth’s fridge just now. The magnets holding it up say “TML”, short for Ten Mile Lake. I’m on Ten Mile right now, the lake in Minnesota where my mom spent her summer growing up. I’m here for a week staying with family and even though I have the occasional moment of complete, overwhelming sadness because I feel like my mom must just be around the corner somewhere - only she’s not - it’s comforting to be here. It’s nice to see my mom in her family’s faces and mannerisms and stories of that one summer when.

Today there was a 4th of July boat parade at 9am. (I thought the 9am part was a prank, but apparently it wasn’t.) Our boat got a score of 9.7, so needless to say, I was in a pretty solid boat. During the parade, we got to talking about 4th of Julys past, and we remembered that when I was younger and we would come back to Minnesota as a family for the 4th, my mom would always get roped into making the entire parade float practically by herself. Back then, it was just a regular parade - not on boats - and my family always had a float in the parade because they owned the main restaurant and hotel in town (Jimmy’s and the AmericInn, respectively). But my family never bothered to actually make their float, so when my mom got into town,  they’d say, “Joanne, we figured you’d be good at doing this”, and even though she didn’t really want to put together a float on vacation, she would.

And she’d do it well, because she was creative and a perfectionist.

And you could count on her.