As I write this, I am home for Easter weekend, and I watch her sitting in a chair, looking up recipes for a ham she wants cook overnight. She’s petting our little pug. Her grey skirt is comfortably posing like a blanket against her white sweater, which contrasts her dark ponytail. She asks me if I know what orange marmalade is. Dad walks into the room and she asks him if he thinks orange marmalade would go with ham. He thinks it would be too sweet. They talk about ham and Easter quiche recipes for a while, and then she starts talking about my three youngest siblings and their spelling sentences. She’s taught all eight of us how to read and write. Now that I’m older, I get to watch in real time how she teaches my little siblings math and science, and how to read a short story.

I can hardly imagine how difficult motherhood is. There seem to be a million handbooks and parent guides and online resources, but at the same time, there are hardly any resources at all. Each and every parent’s life, and child, is new, different, unique. Each parent’s life has so much in common with every other parent’s, and yet each is worlds apart from their personal experiences.

My mom has been married to my dad for 27 years. When I look at her and see her laugh, I catch a glimpse of her from her college years. She is so pretty, joyful, and has a vibrant personality. When she was in college, she majored in special education, and was an incredibly talented singer. She could have given the world those talents and gifts. She could have shared them on a larger scale with school classrooms who would have loved her, and with professional singing opportunities that would have amazed many. Instead, she turned to a very interior life, homeschooling her children, and helping those in her most immediate community. She did this in small ways that made big differences to people, such as by leading groups that help support the military wives whose spouses were currently deployed, while her own husband was also deployed and she had five young children to care for. She turned to making friends with the other young moms in the homeschool group, helping her kids meet theirs to have playdates. She helped out at the local Catholic church and at parish events.

She has stretched in a thousand directions for us. She got piano lessons for us, took us to weekly adoration and daily Mass, karate, horseback riding lessons, violin… And when her kids starting growing up, she drove us to our first jobs, to get our drivers’ license, and to colleges for tours. She’s been with me, and all my siblings, through each stage of our lives. Now I am at college, looking into the face of one last year of it, and she and my dad are supporting me all the way through. I can’t thank them enough for all that they have done and continue to do for me.

My mom has taught me a lot of things, but one of the greatest is this: motherhood does not have to mean an abandonment of one’s dreams and talents. My mom’s love of music and singing wasn’t abandoned; it just looks like singing John Mayer in the car with her kids, taking me to violin lessons, and driving her incredibly gifted son to piano lessons for 10+ years. Her love of music looks like sharing great 80’s music with my dad while they cook dinner together for their family of ten. It looks like helping me discern what music is worthy of me listening to and what is not—teaching me to be picky about what lyrics are worth singing along to, and which aren’t.

My mom has shown me what a generous heart looks like. Generosity comes in many forms, and it is often accompanied by joy. She is kind and thoughtful with everyone she meets, showing how her vocation to motherhood extends to those outside of her own family, even if it is simply with a caring encounter to those she meets in passing. She’s the type of person to happily strike up a conversation with the person bagging the groceries to see how they are doing, make friends with the mailman, and leave small Christmas gifts out for the people who pick up our trash every week.

In my own home, I am thankful for the many ways she has shown generosity to me, in giving her time, attention, love, and material things. She shares a sweater from her closet when I can’t find one that goes with my outfit, but she doesn’t just tell me to borrow it; she tells me to keep it.

My mom really is something of a Wonder Woman in real life, but she has shown me that all she can do comes from God first, and nothing she does is really of her own accord. Her Catholic Faith is what gives her joy, energy to keep up with the craziness of life, and a love for us that will not go out. My dad and her have passed many things down to me but above all of them, I am most grateful for the Faith they have helped me cultivate. They have been there for me while I figure it out for myself, make my own decisions about what I really believe, and have given me the resources to pursue my life in the fullness of Christ.

Parents do a lot for their kids, and give a lot for them. I have seen it firsthand in my home and know I have grown up in something special. Seeing my mom in little moments like these, when she asks me if I like marmalade, I see it: my mom is many things all at once, and all at once she is just one thing: my mom.