I know Mother’s Day was last week but today, I have found myself thinking about my mom.

Like a lot of you, I’m sure, I have a perfect mother. Nothing was or is more important to her than her family and I feel like she passed that on to all her of children. For me and my siblings, our favorite place is home and home is wherever my mom is. Even when we were kids all living under the same roof, having the typical fights and angst, you would still find us all together most of the time. We had our struggles but family closeness was never one of them.

I’m especially grateful for this now that I have my own kids. Ella is getting older and the lessons I have to teach her are getting more complex. They’re less about survival and more about character. They’re not all about the here and now; some are about her future and the big forever. Plus she’s my oldest; eventually, hers will be an example that others follow. I’m building a pattern here and there’s no pattern I admire more than the one my mom created. I always thought that the bond in my family was luck, that our unique blend of personalities just so happened to work well together. But now I realize it was probably my mom who made it so. She made a home environment we all enjoyed, so we spent a lot of time there. So we were constantly immersed in our family culture: love, loyalty, and faith.

Like I said, she’s perfect.

Maybe my mom just got a batch of homebodies to raise or maybe it’s just naturally fun being in a big family. And I’m not even saying that the key to parenting is to keep your kids home all the time. It’s not. Really, there is no key to parenting. There are only doors, endless doors to choose from and all the paths waiting behind them. I’ve only just started on my path of motherhood and I guess all I’m trying to say is that I’m grateful for all the doors my mom chose. They lead me here.

Happy Sunday, everybody.