Mom

 “Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee  

Calls back the lovely April of her prime.”

 

–Shakespeare

 

She sits here in front of me, eating a steaming hot loco moco and gazing out of the window.

“Burning.” she says,”Burning heat.”

My mother is the only person in my life that I trust completely. I feel safe with her. She will always be honest with me, which is the quality that I admire the most. I can ask her anything–be it completely shocking or mundane; and she’ll put thought into the answer.

“What’s a ? How does this work ? Why do guys do this ? Is this wrong ?”

“Well…” and she tells me. She tells me exactly what she’s thinking and everything that she knows.

My mom is the best gate crasher ever. She’s gone into the super bowl multiple times without tickets. She’s busted into private parties. She says that if she were to be a criminal she would be a long con artist. You get huge money. She’s an actress and she bends rules.

She once told me that she expects great things out of me.

“You have it all, honey. You have the height, the beauty, the brains. You don’t ever have to have a ticekt. I expect you to get on an airplane without a boarding pass one day. It’s been done before.”

We laughed hard at that.

“If you had to be a criminal, what would you be?” she asked

“I’d be one of those criminals that appears completely normal, but that lives above the law. I’d rob from the weakness of society.”

“But what would you steal? How would you pay rent and food?”

“I would rob from environmentally unsafe companys.”

“You’re so cute!”

Even now as I type this we’re talking about things that moms and daughters usually don’t talk about so openly and freely. I’m not going to enumerate what that subject is exactly, but it’s usually a large elephant in the rooms of moms and daughters. No subject is taboo for my mom and I, and this makes me feel comfortable. As David Sedaris says, “Parents forbidding something is the quickest way to make an addict.”

My mom says that she will never be angry with me as long as I’m honest with her. She’ll never hold something against me or stop loving me.

I’ve made mistakes in the past, but I’ve owned up to them, and she forgives me. Yes, I’m in the teen angst stage of my life, but no, my mom is not my worst enemy. She’s my biggest ally. I’m not her mirror so much as I’m her partner in crime.