What defines your mom?

My mom is a celebrator. There are no insignificant moments with my mom, no boring days, no dull road trips. Everything my family ever did had some creative twist that made it memorable. (Pardon my bias, but this may be the best quality a mom can have- other than love, of course.)

The theme flowing clearly through all of my memories is water. I’m pretty sure I was born in a canoe, I grew up on a creek near Lake Erie, my family spent more time at the beach than in front of the television, and all of our travels always seemed to end up at Niagara Falls. Despite living surrounded by water for most of our lives, we don’t take it for granted.

Because water is something to celebrate, right Mom? We are stewards of a precious resource, not owners entitled to use it recklessly and leave a mess behind for other generations to clean up.

My mom is a passionate, lifelong student and educator. She wants to KNOW and she wants to SHARE. When all of my friends’  moms would be drinking coffee and reading the newspaper, mine would be studying and documenting the tide patterns on her favorite beach at sunrise and sharing her conclusions with anyone who would listen. When my parents visited me in Phoenix last month, Mom was captivated by desert agriculture and interrogated me about irrigation methods until I introduced her to Richard Restuccia and then she interrogated him. She could probably solve the world water crisis in a week if she tried. Hey, work on that, ok Mom?

My mom is an instigator. A trouble-maker. She invented the mischievous eye twinkle. As an avid indoor gardener (read: house-plant-aholic) and mother of four gifted kids, she must have known that planting Impatiens would eventually come back to bite her. I mean, could that sound any more like “impatience”? So when Mom asked my teenage brother to water her impatiens one day and he cheerfully poured a cup of water over her head, surely it was one of her proudest moments. Wordplay, mischief, AND a great story. You can’t beat that.

Are your habits and traits teaching your kids to be conscious stewards of precious resources? If so, Mother Nature and all future generations thank you! If not, I often provide unsolicited parenting advice for you here on the blog. Check it out here, here, and here. (You’re welcome.)

My mom is always up to some shenanigans, which I tweet about at @MarGoH2O. She also likes to comment as MomGoH2O, so tell her hi. Happy Mother’s Day to all of you blog readers!