Every day should be Mother's Day

Mother's Day is an internationally recognized holiday. In Sweden, Mother's Day is always the last Sunday in May,which is great for me, because it gives me a little time to get my act together and send a gift to my mom which might actually get there in time. Not that she cares if it's late - she loves her artistic, disorganized, procrastinating daughter just the way I am.
Over the years, I've given her a motley assortment of gifts, but I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt which one is her favorite. It's a poem I wrote her when I was a teen, called "Every day should be Mother's Day". She framed it and hung it on her bedroom wall, where it hangs to this day. I think showing her how much I appreciated her, with just a few simple words made her feel valued, and validated in her role as a stay-at-home mom.
My mom, Marianne, is an interesting woman. A striking beauty who turned heads when she was barely a teen, crowned "Lucia" (a traditional winter beauty pageant) of her home town at age 17, she had dreams of going into nursing. Instead, she married my dad at age 21, and settled into making a home. Not that things were always so nice and settled - my parents tell stories of intense arguments early on in their married life. Mom was known to throw plates (it's hard to get that woman out of the kitchen), and then there was the time when my dad retaliated with eggs. Egg yolks running down her kitchen walls, mom dissolved into helpless laughter, argument forgotten.
Mom was my rock growing up. On her seventh-grade education, she nevertheless managed to help me study for my French test. She knew who my friends were, and what was going on in my world. She listened to my dreams and aspirations without cynicism or sarcasm, and she taught me how to drive, simply by sitting back, calmly, and letting me figure it out (whereas my dad the car salesman sat bolt upright, white knuckles clutching the hand brake).
I always knew she'd be a terrific grandma. I have summer memories of walks in the woods where she would catch a frog in her hands for two-year-old Mattias to examine up close (for my neatnik mom, that one was quite a stretch), as well as endless games of Old Maid with a shamelessly cheating five-year-old Linnea.
I guess I was on to something with my teenage poetic effort. Every day should be Mother's Day, in the sense that we should always be aware of how much our loved ones mean to us, and make an effort to express it on a regular basis. I love you, mamma!

Rikki