My mother was a full-time mother. She didn't have much of her own career, her own life, her own experiences... everything was for her children. I will never be as good a mother as she was. She was just grace incarnate. She was the most generous, loving - she's better than me.
There's nothing more noble than a father and mother making an opportunity for their child, knowing that their life is gonna be hard. There's something incredibly heroic about that.
My dad was just a little trailer trash white dude that worked his tail off, didn't have a dad. He started working at 14, didn't get to play sports. He dedicated his life to his kids to let us live our dreams.
Recently I reviewed the history of many missionaries and found a powerful correlation between exceptional missionaries and mothers who chose to remain home, often at great financial and personal sacrifice...They reflect honor to mothers who sacrificed to remain home for their children's benefit.
Dad worked in a warehouse when I was little and I didn't see him for three years as he was doing all the overtime God gave him to buy me new ballet shoes, or a new tutu.
My mother carried me for 10 months. I asked her 'Mother, you had an extra month, why you didn't make me a beautiful face?' and mother told me, 'My son, I was busy making your beautiful hands and heart.'
My parents grew up working class, but in that way that working class families do, they spent a fortune on education to better me.
Thing is, I went to a born-again Christian high school, was brought up in a traditional Mormon family where these ideas about parenting are of structure and sacrifice. To think outside of that idea of family and parenting that I've grown up with is tough but also very freeing.
I try to give my kids everything I never had.
A female salmon lays three thousand eggs a year - and has yet to receive a Mother's Day card from one of them.
