"I can't imagine how anyone would get to know you and see how great you are and then decide not to date you."

"...You're great. Who's better than you?" ~ Mom

Shortly after college, when my heart was deeply broken by someone I thought about spending the rest of my life with - the kind of young, head-over-heels lust/love you think you'll never get over, and in fact it takes a long while to do so - after that, when I was so distraught, my mother told me I shouldn't tell her about anyone I even thought about dating. She said unless I was engaged to them, she didn't want to know. She said I could call them "Mr. X," she just didn't want to meet them and know them and start to care about them if they weren't actually going to officially join the family. She's since become less neurotic and rescinded this policy, but I have followed it religiously. I usually never tell her about anyone I am even remotely interested in. She did know about the 28 dates, but that was because I had to tell her about one really atrocious, ridiculous date I knew she would laugh at. And she did.

For the record, I'm not the only one in the family who doesn't tell her about dating. One of my siblings has brought 2 significant others home and both afterwards broke up with him. Their loss, really. He's amazing and so are the rest of us. (We're also crazy, but amazing nonetheless.) It's kind of become a family joke - don't bring them home, don't tell mom about them, or it'll be bad for the relationship.

But I broke the silent policy last month, to tell her about someone who did not, in fact, want to date me, and it made me so glad to have her for a mom, because what she said above did more for my self-esteem than just about anything in the world. And then she gave me a navy blue corduroy dress, saying, "I got you this. You're the only one in the world I can tell just by looking at the dress if it'll look good on you or not. "

Wow, I'm lucky. I heart mom.