1. She put herself through college. Yeah!
2. When I was in 4th grade, we had a contest to make Diversity Posters. My mom suggested I write “Pride, Not Prejudice” on mine. I won.
3. She also helped me win a hand turkey contest in 1st grade by decorating mine, using glitter and feathers, to look like Olympic gold medal-winning ice skater and Ukrainian orphan Oksana Baiul.
4. She took over as the leader of my Girl Scout troupe when I was in the 6th grade. That year we spent a lot of time making conceptual collages.
5. When I was about 6, I became convinced I knew how to make cottage cheese. (You dump milk on some cut-up cheese was my basic theory.) Despite knowing I was wrong, she got me all the ingredients and let me attempt to make it so that I could see firsthand how wrong I was.
6. On the anniversary of her mom’s death, she organized a dinner in her honor at her favorite restaurant, Great Moon Buffet. She also brought along a hand-made shrine.
7. She taught me everything a woman needs to know about Beatles trivia. On long minivan drives, she would quiz me about which Beatle wrote each song, as well as providing me with video lessons on how Yoko Ono influenced the later and last years of John Lennon’s life.
8. My mom regularly makes outstanding gazpacho soup.
9. She sewed all the patches onto my Taekwondo uniform even though she may have secretly feared the sport was leading me from my original path to be like Olympic gold-medal winning ice skater Oksana Baiul.
10. She listens to me talk about people she has never met with unflagging attention, and remembers all of their names so she can ask about them in the future.

– Becky Lang really hated ice skating lessons.