THE PUBLIC SHELF

For your birthday

Mom,

I've bought you a card every year for thirty two years and I've never once said what I actually wanted to say in it. Cards are too small. So this year you're getting a letter, and you can't wave it away, because it's in writing.

Thank you for the packed lunches with the notes on the napkins. I kept some of them. They're in a shoebox in my closet. I never told you.

Thank you for the rides at two in the morning with no questions. The night I called you from the party in tenth grade, you came in your bathrobe and didn't say a single word the whole drive home. You just handed me a granola bar. I think about that granola bar a lot.

Thank you for working the double shifts I didn't understand at the time. I understand them now. I have a kid of my own and I finally get how tired you must have been, and how you never once let me see it.

And thank you for still saving me the corner piece of lasagna, every Christmas, even though I'm a grown woman.

You're my favorite person. You always have been, even when I was too proud to say so.

Happy birthday, Mom.

Your daughter

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