361 days a year I go about my life, skipping down Main Street, without a care in the world.  My life is pretty much about me.  And me only, at this point.  I do what I want.  I go where I want.  I eat ice cream and cake for entire weeks of time.  I paint my nails black.  I forget to water my plant, subsequently killing the only living thing I’m actually responsible for. I’m me-centric.

And then Mother’s Day rolls around.  I guess there are two days a year when I remember my mommy but for all intents and purposes (and so my math adds up), we’re going to say that it’s the one day a year when my mom is on my mind.  So in an effort to up my mom-centricity I’ve tabulated a top five dedicated to that crazy little lady known as Mommy.

Janice’s Top Five Rules for Life:

#5-  Don’t judge a book by its cover.  Mom was famous for making pinwheels- those ooey, gooey cinnamon rolls that inevitably greet you at the breakfast table the next morning.  But after slicing up a roll of that dough there’s that ugly schmumpled piece leftover.  Like the boy that gets picked on for wearing his pants too high, the girl who’s skirt is a little too short, or the girl who cuts out her paper dolls a little too thin and gets called anorexic by her minister (not speaking from personal experience), that little schmumpled piece will turn into the person that one day admits your son or daughter to college.  Or that ugly little piece of dough turns out to be the best pinwheel in the bunch due to the fact that it has more ridges and pores for that frosting to seep into.  So eat up.  And don’t judge a book by its cover.

#4- I used to belly ache over the fact that I was the only girl in grade school still required, by mommy-law, to wear a dress to school once a week.  Everyone else got to wear jeans.  Yeah?  Well now I’ve had an entire lifetime of jeans-wearing and those dresses with fluffy skirts are lookin pretty good.  Be different.  It might not be ok in 3rd grade when everyone can see your Wednesday underwear (on a Tuesday!) because you’re playing dodgeball in a hoop skirt, but someday little girl, you’ll long for those days.

#3-  The best gift you can give requires a postage stamp.  Today alone I have emailed friends flung far and wide.  I have picked up the phone and dialed someone in a different area code.  But have I written a letter?  Nope.  Whenever I had birthday parties I would bemoan having to write a thank you note to my friends for their gifts (I really was a little stinker as a child.  And all this complaining is testing my vocabulary of words to use in lieu of “complaining”).  But guess what I did Wednesday night while still detoxing from my cake high?  I sat down and wrote thank you notes, all thanks to my mom.  That’s because in today’s world I’m sick of typing and texting and twittering.  Today I want a postage stamp.  It says “I love you enough to walk the block to the post office and slap $.42 cents onto this hand-addressed envelope.”  That’s a love we don’t get much any more.  And sometimes that’s the best kind of love there is.

#2-  Stand up straight.  Eye contact.  Firm handshake.  I know, I know, mooooooom.  But you have no idea how many times a day I think my lucky stars that mom burned into my memory these three little things.  Because every time a little blob of a 17-year-old slumps down in my interview chair I brace myself for what’s likely to be a painful next 20 minutes.  And then, usually, I meet their mom.  And I realize that the slumpy little apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

#1-  Remember when I moved away to college?  All 841 miles away from home.  My parents were scared I’d hate it.  I’d cling to mom like Linus to his blanket.  My parents were scared I would be stolen away by a pack of beer chugging frat lords.  6 years later I’m still alive (though I do still cling to my blankie).  But there was a day during that first week on campus, with mom sitting in a KFC not far down Route 60, that my dad called me and said “call your mother.”  Maybe it was the fact that mom had made friends with every restaurant proprieter, shop owner and sales clerk in town.  Or maybe it was AmEx’s constant calls about suspicious charges at a boondocks WalMart.  Or maybe it was mom’s drowning her sorrows in a bucket of fried chicken (not even the new fake grilled stuff!) that worried him.  Either way, he knew mom was miserable.  And he knew my picking up the phone would solve things.  To this day, that’s still how it goes.  The world’s out to get me?  Mommy to the rescue.  My eyeballs swell up and I’m scared I’m dying?  Dr. Mom!  I forget to put baking powder (or was it soda?) in my biscuits?  Mom.  There are any number of reasons that we should all remember to call our mothers.  Demons, pollen, flat biscuits, Mother’s Day.