A few weeks ago my niece said her husband had mentioned that he wished he had known her grandmother, my mother, when she was still active. My mother has been a resident of the New Martinsville Rehabilitation and Care Center for about a year-and-a -half now. While she is not mentally incapacitated, she certainly doesn’t live as vibrant a life as she once did.

My niece said, “Well, you’ve met my mom and my aunts. . . so you’ve met grandma.”

She is right. There’s a very real reason we have the saying, “Like mother, like daughter.” It’s because it is often very true.

I have three sisters-Karen, Wilma, and Betsy. We are all different in many ways, but we are all definitely the products of our parents. There are many times we say, “You/I get that honest. That’s just like mom/dad.”

It may be our stubborn streak, our desire to have fun and forget about housework, our concern for the less fortunate, our creativity, our love of a good bargain, our unwavering competitive streak, or our productivity in the kitchen, but at times we all have an aspect of our mother that comes to the surface.

For the most part it’s a good thing. Our mother raised us well, I think. We all turned out okay and are contributing members of society. But most of all I think my mother taught us that life is to be lived. While our messy house certainly bothered me from time to time during my growing up years, I can certainly say now that I cherish the times my mom took me golfing and we spent more time picking up lost balls in the rough than actually hitting them in the fairway. That is better than picking up toys or dirty clothes any day.

A friend of mine recently said she wanted a maid to come to her house during this busy Little League season. I told her, “People will just have to understand that you’re living life, not simply cleaning it up!” Those sound like words that would have come from my mother.

My mother wasn’t perfect and neither am I. Neither are my sisters or brother, although they may try to deny it. But I think I can speak for us all when I say we thank her for the way she raised us. We are better for her smiling, fun-loving nature. We benefitted from the time she spent with us.

We come from one of those families that doesn’t often say we love each other. In fact, my mom really doesn’t even like to hear it. But I know something she does like to hear, that someone is a “goody kid”. So mom, thanks for raising us to be “goody kids”. We really appreciate it.