The Greatest Gift Our Mom Ever Gave Us

Favorite Vacation Moment

Daytona Beach, FL

by WinterWorks March 31, 2008

My mom took up Texas Hold 'Em and gave up worrying during our Florida trip.

My mother didn't worry about anything for a whole week. That might not seem incredible to you, but to my four siblings and I, this achievement belongs on the list of most unlikely outcomes ever, ranking higher than the U.S. hockey team's 1980 defeat of the Soviet Union and lower than the British defeat of the Spanish Armada. Our family has the beach of New Smyrna, Florida, to thank for this glorious moment in the history of our family.

Our mother has worried about something for as long as we have been alive and probably even before then. For one week, however, she worried about only one thing: having the time of her life with her children, her grandchildren and her extended family. I'm 40 and the oldest sibling, and I have never seen my mother focus so wholly on herself. She simply decided that if we could succeed in eliminating the distance that turned our one extended family into our six geographically distinct nuclear families, well then, she was going to take advantage of the opportunity and create some true quality time with her family. As a result of this attitude, she couldn't waste her time worrying about us. Instead, she devoted every moment of our beach vacation to having the time of her life.

She beat the sun to the beach every morning. On each day of our vacation, she walked with our dad or with one of her children three miles along the beach and three miles back. The next morning, the previous day's walker would make an excuse, and another of us would rise to the challenge -- for that day, anyway. She ran out of walkers before she ran out of days in her vacation. Under the midday sun, she played cut-throat shuffleboard or lounged by the water, wearing new and unusually vibrant beachwear that announced her attitude toward this vacation without her having to utter a word.

My three brothers, my sister and I had never seen our mom dress or act in this manner. Throughout our childhoods, she worried much more about getting her kids' clothes clean than she did about buying clothes for herself -- or buying anything for herself for that matter. But this vacation was different. She decided that for once in her life she would concentrate only on having fun. For those of us who have benefited from her selfless devotion to her family for the past fortysomething years, it was amazing, and it made all of us appreciate and savor this vacation like no other.

And that included the late-night poker nights usually reserved for the college-age members of the family or at least those who still pretend that they are recent college graduates. These hearty partiers made the mistake of teaching her how to play Texas Hold 'Em. The poker gods decided to honor my mom's new attitude with unbelievably good cards throughout her time in New Smyrna. She didn't just seize the day; she seized the pot, literally trashing the family card sharks at their own game.

It was a perfect representative moment of the whole vacation. Finally, our mom put herself first. The irony is that her doing so was the best gift she ever gave to her five children.