My Mother

I am great.

Or at least that's what I keep telling myself.

Always being called my mother's “artistic child”

Painting my failures into these beautiful achievements.

With the colors I've searched for in desperation.

She praises me, my mother.

She talks of my shortcomings like they were purposeful. Like I meant to trip and break into a run.

She tells me I picked her, that my spirit somehow knew that she would be the best for me.

When I was 16 I thought she was wrong.

When I was 20 I went to her for advice and didn't take it.

When I was 25 I collapsed in her arms and admitted that she was right all along.

Her smile is kind and genuine. The look of your childhood home, familiar and comforting.

Her hands are soft, regardless of the work they have done through the years. The cuts they have mended and wiped away tears. The drinks they have slung in order the hold up the roof that would keep us safe. The times they have given instead of taken.

I have my mother's hands, the length of the fingers are the same. They are elegant and can stretch wide and have been taught to catch the hurt of the ones I love.

They have similar scars, just not as deep and on different places. They have held the faces of lovers and friends and told them of their worth.

Her laugh is one that fills a room with happiness. It's contagious in the most unique way.

My favorite picture of my mother is one of her laughing. She's dressed simply, in cut off jeans and a white shirt and he head is thrown back in absolute joy. A snap of a moment in time where the world stood still so the happiness could be absorbed by the friendships she surrounded herself with.

She laughs like that often yet there are so few picture of her elation that I often forget that she has laughed under dark and dreary skies and told the world that she won't feel the sadness it wants her to feel.

She's turned the cards in that have been dealt to her by the devil and made them a beautiful masterpiece. A royal flush of achievements trails behind her.

She's taught me when to speak up for myself and when to sit down and listen.

She has taught me that being wrong isn't the worst thing in the world, and to always ask questions to answers you don't know, for stupidity is mirrored in those with all the right answers and a lack of humility that hangs around them like an overbearing stench.

My mom is the greatest woman on the planet and I will fight anyone that tells me different for her flaws are just truths shining through her humanity and much like she's always accepted me

I accept her in all of her beauty,

because just like I picked her, the creator brought her to me.