On her last visit, my mother brought over a box of things that she’d saved over the course of my childhood: early drawings, high-school term papers, first stories and notes. Looking forward to a trip down memory lane, I began to sort through them. Within moments two things became evident. Firstly, that my mother went through all of my trash (a love letter from my first boyfriend, which includes the depressingly spelled “arection” proves this point). And secondly, she apparently chose only to fish out the things that would most embarrass me.
Where are all the well-executed drawings, the A plus papers, the naive and yet endearing journal entries? They are long gone, and in their place exist all manner of horrors. A grade school essay on Goya (don’t ask) is particularly misinformed, and a drawing from my early years, in which I’ve lovingly adorned a list that my mother herself has written, is earnest enough to break your heart.
The list, entitled “Stuff That Makes Mom Happy”, places “being alone” and “working” in the top slots, and goes on to include fishing, running, and ballet class in consecutive order. (Spending time with her daughter is, needless to say, conveniently missing.) My mother has also contributed her own cartoon horse to the edge of the drawing, and with it’s back to the viewer, the horse is quite obviously running away.
I am surprised how much I have enjoyed raising two boys. From the moment I found out I was having my first boy, I thought, no way, I don't even know what to do with a boy...I'm a girl. Somehow its all worked out.
My mother’s name is Gladys, and the name just doesn’t fit her.
I think it was Joan Rivers who joked about an epitaph that would suit her: “I’d rather be here than in the kitchen!” Or was her line, “If God wanted women to cook, he would have given them aluminum hands?" Either way, my mother has lived by both of these lines her whole life, well at least for as long as I lived with her as a kid. So imagine my and my sisters’ surprise when one sunny Sunday morning, while in our early and mid-teens, we awoke to a basket of picture-perfect bran muffins. Astounding. 
I've been making stuffed artichokes with my mom since I was about 6 years old. When my hands were still too small to tackle the prickly, cactus-like leaves of the artichoke, I was in charge of making the stuffing. There was something indescribably satisfying about it: first I wet the stale Italian bread and squished in between my fingers, then I grated lots of cheese and added a slew of black olives (which, by the way, made lovely finger extensions). It gave "playing with your food" a whole new perspective.