My mother, my friend.

Today is a special day for a special person in my life.

I was, from the start, difficult, and many (myself included) would say nothing’s changed. A tough pregnancy, and I popped out blue, with a hole in my heart. The expectation was I wouldn’t live to be old enough for the surgery to fix it — but mom was a fighter, and I did; and then the hole healed itself, a 1 in a million shot.

And that’s my mom — no matter what, she never gave up, and always fought to give me and my family opportunity; whether we took it was up to us. She was a big believer in education, and pushed us to be the best we could be. She taught us to think, not what to think. She taught us question, observe and challenge — but with respect and honor.

As I grew up and started becoming me, we didn’t always see eye to eye — but she tolerated my growing pains and accepted my right to make my own mistakes, helping me learn from them if I asked (which I usually did, although sometimes years later).

And a funny thing happened. Along the way, she stopped being my mom, and became my friend. And she still is, one of my best. We still disagree on things, but with a few exceptions (which we simply have chosen to stop talking about, like politics), it’s a disagreement of peers with respect.

This month, she’s celebrating her 49th anniversary with my dad (and if you think my arguments with her over politics are crazy, mom’s a diehard republican conservative, and dad’s a classic democratic liberal — no wonder I ended up moderate). In a day of serial marriage and casual divorce, it might have been the most important life lesson she taught me.

A few years ago, she got hit with a nasty bug — seriously damaging her lungs, and forcing her onto oxygen. They think she picked it up on one of the cruises through the pacific, but they never figured out exactly what. I remember the day she emailed me asking me to research information on it. I looked up the first pages in Google and freaked. Today, much to the amazement of her doctors, she’s almost completely oxygen free. It was a commitment to not give up, a refusal to let it stop her.

Then last year, she slipped and fell — and seriously damaged some vertebra (already damaged by years of arthritis and the heavy steroids her lung problem forced her to take). She spent a week on asprin and heating pads before admitting how serious it was and going to her doctor — who freaked, of course, that she could survive the pain, much less walk. Her spine too damaged for fusing the vertebrae, she was told she might never walk again.

It took her months — but today, she’s almost free of her walker, he doctor keeps telling her to quit pushing her exercising so hard, and she and dad are going on another cruise this fall (23? 24? I’ve lost count). In her 80′s now, she’s not old, she’s just not as spry as she used to be.

It was her example that gave me the ability to take on middle age with (I like to think) grace and (mostly) a positive attitude. When things have gotten tough, her toughness has been one of the things I’ve used to give me the strength to keep fighting. And when I’ve felt like giving up, her refusal to — and her success by doing so — has been a key reason I’ve found a way to keep going, and succeed.

She’s my friend as well as my mother, and if there are things you like about me, you can congratulate her for them (if there are things you don’t like, it’s probably because I didn’t listen). And I say thank you to her a lot, but it’s never enough.

So thanks, and enjoy today. You’ve earned it.

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