Today we celebrate the day my Mom came into the world, and every day since then the world has been a better place because of it. Any remnants of kindness and goodness, patience and concern, grace and dignity, and style and élan that I may possess have been passed on to me from her. She’s the person who taught me how to put an outfit together, but that underneath it all such superficial trappings didn’t really matter. She showed me through example more than words that while we should be generous enough to want to impress people, what anyone else thinks of us is vastly unimportant to how we feel about ourselves. She’s also illustrated that sometimes it’s enough to give, without expecting anything in return, and the sort of grace that results is something precious and rare, and to be her son is a blessing I most often don’t deserve.
We’ll have her and the family over for dinner in honor of her birthday, and I’m already at work plotting out our Mother’s Day weekend on Broadway (‘Dear Evan Hansen’ tickets are already in the bag). Happy Birthday, Mom!!
