i remember challenging my Mother with complicated sewing projects...I wanted my clothes to look like the stuff they wore on Battlestar Gallactica. I was able to talk her into a making blue denim jump suit, but after that she offered more direction than actually sewing services. She showed me how to sew 2 pieces of fabric together and make little pillows.

I remember making soup. It was the moment I learned how to cook-I was dissatisfied with what we were having for dinner, and mom persuaded me to help. She was making soup- Campbell's vegetable maybe. I stepped in to help spice it up, I remember going through the kitchen cabinet taking out spices and asked her.

I remember coming home from school with scholastic order forms- I usually would select a books about monsters, and the ever popular a Dynamite magazine. Seeing the money changing hands, I got the idea to make up an order form of my own. I could cut of the middle man and would sell the books to my mom. I drew up a similar order form with pencil complete with product descriptions of the kinds of books I thought my mom would like--with check boxes and prices next to each. Dog book : 15 cents. super dog book 25 cents.
Mom would place her orders and I would run off to create the picture books they asked for. I would return shortly with her orders and collect my money. She was my best customer, as I could never seem to persuade my brothers and sister to PAY me for my drawings.

After a while, I could not raise enough revenue with handmade books order forms and restaurants in my room... I had to get a paper route. I remember watching M.A.S.H reruns with mom during the summer as I folded my newspapers. I remember being taken around in our family car on rainy or snowy days and the big project of delivering the thanksgiving paper.

When I was a teenager, Mom rolled here eyes when I dyed my hair and pierced my ear.... but she never threatened to kick me out of the house. She let me go my own way. In school and with church. She didn't pressure me to excel in academics- Yet she drove me from Smithfield to Logan a hundred thousand times go I could attend karate classes.

I remember my Mother used to have a hard time on mothers day. We would come back from church and she'd be a little sad. Maybe the other kids at church were dressed better than we were, more likely better behaved. Maybe the other mothers were more stylish and spent more time knitting booties and pot holders. Maybe the other people in church, or my father... made her think she wasn't a good enough. Being a mother is one of the hardest and jobs anyone could undertake-- she came to understand that all mothers, coming from a place of love for their children wished they could be better... and that all mothers do the best they can. They learn and love and grow and make it up as they go along if they have to. My mother was not Martha Steward, or Julia Child-- but to this day, I realized she thought me lessons that I have used every day of life. She thought me in showing me the things that she knew and thought me by allowing me to do things she could not. She never expected me to be anything that what I was, and never gave me a reason to lie. She never withheld her approval.

She is the Mother I asked God for. She will always be with me.

I Love You Mom.

Toby