I love my mom. She puts in countless hours for my own success because of her love for me. Whether it’s through ironing my clothes when I have to dress nice for church, to spending slow, boring hours at my sporting events, like cross county meets, wrestling matches and reffing jobs, and even dealing with my thoughtless behaviors that break her heart. She listens to my stories and complaints about people who don’t care about me the way she does. She is open to hear my opinion on certain teenage rebellion, that make complete sense in my mind, but her adult wisdom knows what is best. It’s hard for me to admit that she knows what is best at times, but when I do something wrong, like procrastinate my studies or eat too much food, and she was right about it in the first place, it doesn’t actually make me mad; but it makes me love her more.

One time, I was driving my mom through somewhat busy traffic. Enough cars to be careful, but there wasn’t a traffic jam or anything. The roads were slick, it was around the middle of January. My mom had been telling me to slow down for about a month when I was on the road, but I would always tell her “I’m going the speed limit!” and she would tell me to slow down anyway. I had to make a right on Sashabaw because it is near my house, but I can’t get any more specific than that. I was going the speed limit and I started to slow down. I stepped on the brakes and the car began to slide on the icy, slushy road. I panicked, but in-a-more-experienced-than-I-actually-have way, I pulled off the road, rather than hitting the car in front of me. My mom sits there and tells me, “that could’ve been a lot worse. Don’t worry about it,”. But in the back of my mind, I knew she had been right all along about driving slow. I drove like a grandma the rest of the way home.

These moments make you realize how humble parents are about certain things, even if they made amazing points earlier, and you didn’t make a conscious effort to obey them. It is what makes them so approachable, so important, so vital. Of course, there are some things I don’t want to tell my mom: Inside jokes, wild times, love life, weird hobbies and dozens of stories that would only disappoint her. But, it really doesn’t matter because she always ends up finding out. Not because I’m stupid, most of the time, but because she is smarter than me. She has more experience. She was a kid once too. She dealt with days where her friends were out having fun late at night, while she was home with her parents, upset she couldn’t go. She dealt with days where her boyfriend had to be out of the house at nine o’clock at night, which was just when all the fun started. She dealt with the moments where she really wanted something and she just couldn’t have it because her parents said they didn’t need it. The stories that she tells me are just as painful as the ones I deal with today. But knowing she dealt with similar stories gives me an understanding that what she is doing is right, and that I should just let her take the wheel.

When I was about ten, I grabbed all of my Halloween candy and hid it under my bed. Most kids would say, “Are you hiding it from your siblings? Or maybe your friends?” That was never the case for me because I was always hiding my candy from my mom. My mom is healthy, fit and very into eating healthy too. This is a quality my mom has that I deeply envy, as I could go downstairs right now and eat a whole box of Lucky Charms. I hid the candy from my mom because I didn’t want her to take it away and “give it to the needy” as she would claim. So I hid it. And I ate it. All of it. In about a week. I lived my life a happy man, as I had just finished all of my Halloween candy, but also with somewhat of a guilty conscious. I felt bad for hiding my candy from my mom and doing that. But in the end, it didn’t matter because she had already known all along.  But she didn’t yell, she didn’t scream, she didn’t outrage. She just talked. Talking was definitely the worst punishment of all. This is because everytime Mom just wanted to talk, it ended up being a guilt trip for me. The talk is bad because she tells you how disappointed she is with you and your dishonesty. You hurt the trust, the bond, the love that has been building up and over through the days and nights you spend together. I hurt that trust. I hurt that bond. I hurt that love and yet, I know that Mom still loves me for who I am because she knows what I am capable of doing.

Best of all, she’s there through the worst of times, caring and loving, even if it is just as tough for her too. I once went to a friends house and told my mom that I was gonna be there for the night. I got to my friends’ house and I truly thought we were just gonna hang around and stay. But plans started to change, and I wanted to join them. We were going to go out for the night and hang at other peoples houses because we wanted to have as much fun as possible. Before we were going to go out, I had a slight thought come through my mind. “Is it worth it? What if I get caught or in trouble? Will it really be worth it?” I almost told my friends I was going home that night. Not listening to my gut was the biggest mistake I have ever made. Ever. We went to the party and had a great time. Music, friends, drinking. I too was involved in all of the fun. All my worries had drifted away, I was having a good time and thought everything was going to be alright. At around midnight, we headed home. My mom had texted me several times to see where I was at and what I was doing. I told her everything was alright and I would see her in the morning. The next morning I woke up and went home. She knew something was up. She found some things from the party and I told her what had happened. “I’m not as mad about what you’ve done, but I’m disappointed in the lying”. Those words hurt me then, and they still hurt me as I write about this very story. Trust was lost that night and it’s still rebuilding today. My regrets of going that night live with me today. I am angry writing about it. But at the end of the day, the trust will eventually rebuild. I don’t want to hurt my mom like that ever again. The lies, the sneakiness, the sins. They all build up and change the way she looks at me. She loves me, but she will always know what I did to her. But she still loves me. The next day we talked about what I had done and we dealt with the punishment talks. Damn, the punishments sucked. But before we were done, she said something to me. “I am very disappointed in what you did, but I forgive you”.

The best things about moms, and parents in general is that they’re forgiving. When I snuck the candy under my bed and lied to her to protect myself, it only hurt me and my relationship with my mom. The lying hurt our bond, our views of each other. The view was replaced with an overwhelming sadness. That sadness always seems to get to me and make me feel horrible in the weirdest ways. Almost like it makes you want to tell her the things you did, even if it makes your life harder in the long run.

But, I have learned, that I would rather live my life clean and trustworthy with my mom than living a careless, arrogant life where my mom has no respect for me or any kind of trustworthy relationship. These kinds of relationships may be fun in the short run, but in the end, kids I’ve known to have this type of lifestyle always end up in trouble. This is because I love my mom. Not just because packs my lunch or listens to hours and hours of my high pitched music in the car. But because she loves me even when I do something that could break her heart. Whether it’s driving recklessly and invincibly on the roads, to hiding Halloween candy for myself, to sneaking around late at night and doing illegal things, she deals with them out of love.

I always tell my mom, “out of all the parents of kids at my school, you are in the ninety-ninth percentile for strictness”. As I say this, my step-dad laughs. The laugh annoys me because I want it to be the other way around in the heat of the moment, when I’m invited to a party or want to go to Florida with a friend for spring break. My step-dad replies, “if your mom is in the ninety-ninth percentile for strictness, that just means she loves you more than ninety-nine percent of all the moms out there”. I believe that.