This is Mike  
Y'all should know my mom was a tremendous influence on me and is the reason I want to share a little about her today.
   She was a young lady who left Germany at age 22, after the war. Prior to leaving Germany, she traveled 16 miles a day by bicycle to work to earn Deutsche Reichs Marks that were totally worthless after the war. She still went to work because it was the right thing to do.
   In 1954, she moved to Canada for a better life but found that she ended up in a sweat shop. Her early days were in a world of different languages, different settings, nothing familiar. She worked ungodly hours under stress from the company and lived on-site in a dorm. She had no way to decompress from the terrible working conditions. One day she finally threw in the towel as she could not take it anymore. That night she broke out of the factory by tying two bed sheets together and lowering herself out the dorm window to the ally below.
   There she was in Canada and could not understand English, no money, truly stuck. She chose a direction and went with it. She walked through a lot of nothing and finally ended up near a German Club. At that German club she met a young man who offered to buy her a beer, he would later become my father.
   My father had very little as he too was a new immigrant to Canada, but still he proceeded to ask my mom for a dance. She accepted, however fate was not sealed until my mom cooked a duck dinner three or four weeks later. My dad always said "the moment I ate the duck I knew she was the one for me."???  I think how silly this is! I think how great this is! I am just happy they listened to their bodies, their hearts, themselves. They knew at that moment who they were and accepted each other, poverty and all.
   I was a mommy's boy all my life, so much so that I actually put my arm around her while she pushed  a shopping cart in the grocery store. Other moms in the aisles would comment to my mom about how lucky she was. My mom was so happy and loved chatting with strangers about how I was always so close to her. I am so happy I did that while I was young rather than wishing I would have done that after she was gone. Time is so precious, so temporary, so perfectly... whatever you'd like to say.
   I would encourage all boys to love their moms more than convention allows, to be the happy person your mom wants you to be with no regrets. Find love everywhere and know the difference between love and lust. In fact, my mom always said, "love should be as easy as breathing." I wish my mom could see how cool my friends are in Steiner Ranch. We have a special neighborhood! She was so awesome that she would have been happy for each and everyone of us. She would have thought our priorities were spot-on if she saw us on any given Friday night unwinding together, kids and all.
   Life is temporal, we should hold on to the things that give us joy.
   When my mom was on her death bed, I asked her, "what is the meaning of life?" She said, with a straight face, "life is like a chicken ladder, full of shit from top to bottom." I laughed because a family friend was there and made lite of it, but I knew deep down she was right. I wonder how many Bee Hive hairdos she had before she realized they weren't as important as she made them out to be.
   Life is much easier than we make it. Life is like a chicken ladder, for better or worse. Accepting the perfectly imperfect and laughing off the seriousness is a talent we should all try to master. Here's to all the moms out there!