Last week, in the middle of sheltering in place, my mom hosted an impromptu “socially distanced” wedding in her back yard on Lake Norman, North Carolina.

Having heard of a young couple whose wedding plans were ruined due to COVID-19, she told Rick “I am not going to let that girl not have a wedding on her wedding day”. She didn’t even know these people and yet here she was, in the middle of a pandemic, celebrating and feeding and popping open prosecco because that’s the sort of thing she does. Mom never misses an opportunity to “love hard”.

Teresa was all of twenty years old when I was born and her energy was infectious. She dug in the dirt, took us on adventures with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the back of the car. We had a unicycle and roller skates and a treehouse and a trampoline and a tire swing. Mom regularly demonstrated use of them all.

My first words were “good girl” if that gives any indication of how incessantly praised my brother and I were as children. She even wrote us songs. Mine was called “Courtney’s World”, so basically, I was destined to be an attention-seeking monster from the very beginning.

When I called home crying from my first semester of college because I was desperately homesick, she said “I need to go Courtney and I don’t want to hear from you again until you’ve made a friend”. By the end of Christmas break, I couldn’t wait to return to school. Maybe she knew what she was doing after all?

She was thrilled when I moved to New York City and not-so-secretly pissed when I moved to Los Angeles (“I mean…it’s just so far away Courtney and nice weather really does not make up for an astronomical cost of living”).

I could go on and on with all my Teresa stories. These few barely scratch the surface. She’s been my biggest cheerleader from the beginning. Saying again and again, “it’s my job to give you roots and to give you wings”. She absolutely did. For this and all the times I’ve needed a listening ear, or a recipe, I am thankful.