She’s the most strong, brave, tireless woman i know- yes, another single- mom-sob-story.
She’s the most selfless out there- those Steve Madden wedges have been in commission for years…When times are tight (which seem to be frequent) she makes sure I get a new back-to-school wardrobe before she even buys herself a shirt. She creatively recycles outfits she’s had for eons to ensure that I’m keeping up with the Jones’ in my affluent Long Island community.
She can be a bit socially awkward, but almost always hilariously funny. I’ve seem to have inherited her sense of sarcasm as well as her impressionable laugh (which has been both quoted as “the best” by some obscure kid in my Spanish class, and as “the cause of my most garishly frightening nightmares” by some cruel entry in my high school year book).
She’s beautiful. Although there wasn’t much boob to be passed on (I most likely took the most during breast-feeding), I’m proud to say that I managed to get her voluptuous ass out of the deal. She also passed along her canvas to paint on- our Slavic bone structure. My mom taught me my most favorite life lesson thus far- that femininity is theatrics and its fun to play pretend with your appearance. She taught me how to accentuate cheekbones, hazel irises and olive skin tones with different makeup. She led me to appreciate “matte” over “shine” before L’Oreal popularized it on the shelves of our local CVS. I knew how to blend in high school when most of the other girls color-blocked their faces like a child’s coloring book. My mom with with her Bobbi Brown eyeshadow brushes is like Gustav Klimt with his gold leaf (one of my mom’s favorite artists). She taught me how to master the entertaining masquerade of “girliness” and I love her for it.
As a little girl, when a round brush pulled to hard, I heard, “beauty is pain, Zo”. When puberty pamphlets were stiffly passed out to the girls in my 5th grade class, I came home and heard, “play with your legs open in front of the mirror, see what you look like”. I can thank my mother for my never having to use a diaper- I mean pad- a day in my life. She was open enough to introduce me to Aunt Flo early on and gave me the confidence to securely slip a slim tampax up there at the first “spotting”. Now we’re both up to supers, but I’d say with all the recent hot-flashes, she’s borderline menopause now.
Lastly, she is straight up neurotic. Clinically anxious- she even has our therapists on their toes. I’m thinking a Form 4 could definitely help her cum down a bit (I’m so punny).

Please help me give my mom the beautiful gift of an orgasm for Mother’s Day! She deserves it!

As a child, I of course was clueless as to what it took to raise two children, negotiate their pottery and rock climbing lessons, work overtime, and always, ALWAYS have a wholesome, home-cooked meal on the table for dinner, all without the help of a husband or partner.

I always loved my mother, but was a handful of a child, and of course didn’t appreciate her controlling ways, and of course did not understand the [blissfully] bohemian life she had built for the three of us.

Later, I found out she had done this all almost completely broke. She worked overtime to make sure we had those damn pottery and rock climbing lessons. I remember the day we discovered she had sucked up her embarrassment over straddling the poverty line and had located a private Spanish tutor who would partly volunteer her time for weekly lessons to make sure that we grew up cultured and appreciative. She spent her free time in her favorite chair, us cuddled on her lap, reading Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women or some other beautifully prosed novel with big cups of iced tea. She plopped us on the counter with bribery bowls of ice-cream when we had to have a splinter removed from our always bare feet. She never flinched when we came home covered head-to-toe in grass stains, mud or worse. She scrubbed the floors in our house on her hands and knees, and the way her hands smelled after is one of my favorite memories. She mowed our lawn. She spread her checkbook and papers across the table to do bills, and fixed the back steps when they began to cave under years of use. She had, I now realize, this incredible tenacity and resilience that grew out of only two things: her love for us, and her desire to make our lives something incredible.

As we grew, she taught us about pride and respect, and how to love our bodies and be proud of the things we possessed. She taught us to be individuals, and how to hold our heads high in any conversation. She FORCED etiquette upon us [it was rare someone could sneeze in our general direction without receiving a well-worded thank you note], and we became confident, capable, and conscious under her thoughtful guidance. We learned about sex through a horrifyingly descriptive goat analogy, which we all left completely red-faced. The first edition of The Joy of Sex appeared on our coffee table the next week. We figured out our lives day by day.

As an adult, I am only now beginning to grasp the struggles and triumphs she must have experienced. I find it hard enough to balance work and a personal life, and somehow she negotiated not only these, but children, a lack of finances, and a less than stellar ex-husband simultaneously. I am truly thankful for the tools she provided me, as I credit her wholly for the majority of the positives in my life. Even my failures take on a brightness when I think of her sound advice: it takes all kinds of people to make the world go around, and all kinds of moments. If it’s a bad moment, pick yourself up, darling. The next is sure to be better.

In essence, thanking her yearly is never enough, but thanks to my mom for all she was, is, and continues to be. And mom… I still remember my Spanish!

What my mom doesn’t talk about is the way she forewent relationships with men to focus on raising me. It’s not like she had a lot of time for love, anyway, since she was a single mother with less skills than she’d hoped to have. But more importantly, she saw the way her friends’ boyfriends and husbands treated their children from previous marriages, and she couldn’t stand the thought of choosing someone else over her daughter – or watching someone else mistreat me in the first place.

Now that I’m a woman, on my own after losing a long-term relationship that meant so much to me, I have started to appreciate the sacrifice of that part of her womanhood. It’s not that she wanted it to work out that way; it’s not that she hadn’t tried. But I’ve found myself wishing I could somehow repay all the nights she slept alone in the hopes of keeping me safe.

When I was in my 20s, she came to me to ask about condoms and although it was awkward, I jumped at the opportunity to keep her safe and help her seek the pleasure she’d been missing. All I really needed to know was that she had finally met someone she liked and she was going to be careful.

A couple years later, after getting home from a vacation, my boyfriend found part of a condom wrapper in our house. He was about to accuse me of something unsavory when I remembered that my mom had stayed over while we were gone. And I was too amused to be angry when she expressed embarrassment over the evidence she’d unwittingly left behind. My boyfriend wasn’t so amused, but I couldn’t begrudge the fact that she was an adult woman. (Besides, I knew she’d sterilized the area before and afterward.)

My mom is always bragging to anyone who will listen about me, but I brag to anyone who will listen about her. I’ve been agonizing over what to get her for Mother’s Day this year because I’d like to give her a gift she can use for years to come. It would be nice to give her something she can use to learn more about her own body, too, and I know the Form 4 will fit the bill. I love my Form 6 with all of my heart, so my needs are being met – but I think it’s high time my ma lived sexy. I hope you’ll agree with me!