Happy Birthday, Mom...

Just wanted to take a moment today to remember my mom's birthday... She would have been 72 today, it's amazing and saddening that it has been 22 years since she passed away way too young... I look at my kiddos and wistfully think about how it would feel to have her see them and love them as I know that she would have. I regret that they never had a chance to meet her. I talk about her a lot, and show them pictures... they know how important she was to me, but it's just not the same. We are so lucky to have had multiple other surrogate grandmothers step in for them over the years, and we are so thankful for them and for loving my kids as if they were there own grandchildren.

Lucy Cuen Bradford was an amazing woman. In a word, beautiful. Funny. Smart. Witty. I got her bad temper. I think mine might be a little worse than hers, actually. She spoiled me rotten. I was her baby, the youngest of 8, and although I know she loved us all, she always made me feel like I was her favorite.

I regret that I never had the chance to talk to her as an adult... Adult relationships are so different than childhood relationships... I wonder what I could have learned from her. I think in some ways, having lost that opportunity with her has changed how I treat my relationships with my own children. I consciously try to have deeper and more meaningful conversations with them, and hope that they take what I have to say with them...

Happy Birthday, Mom. I love you. I miss you.

Me and my mom... ignore the birth year, I've got it wrong!



My mom and my Grandma Angela (my namesake)...



My Mom, Dad, Older Sister and I the summer I was born... 1976...



Beautiful...



The following pictures blatantly stolen from my sister's blog... Thanks's Liz!



My mom with my oldest sister Felicia



I'd never seen this picture before, I presume it was from my mom's first marriage - beautiful!