"We've turned into our mothers" My friend told me the other day.

Oh don't I know it, I replied. Yet I realized I turned into my mother a very long time ago.

16 year old me would never have wanted to turn into my mother. She didn't get me. I certainly was not about to confide in her. We were nothing alike.

Fast forward to being an adult and I eat every single word I ever said.

We were actually, exactly alike.

And I realized the reason that we may have disagreed in those teenage years was because we were SO alike.

When DH and I started dating, he would often ask "who are you talking to?" I usually replied "my mother" Where he would then reply "didn't you just talk to your mother earlier?" Where then I would laugh.

Because of course I had spoken to her earlier.

But that was about a movie that I wanted to see with her or regarding a book we both recently read. This phone call was to gossip about an old friend. Or to talk about where we wanted to go to lunch after we went shopping. Or to talk about her day with her "bridge ladies" and a funny story she wanted to share with me.

A month into our relationship DH no longer questioned who I was on the phone with.

He knew it was most always my mother.

He knew it was our 5th time that day but he learned very quickly this was us. This was who we were.

As I married and had kids, our phone calls were just as numerous. If not more.

My son had a cough, tantruming woes, not sleeping, cranky mom, social fears, mommy fears She was my support. Always.

She was the woman who came to visit me daily, for 6 1/2 weeks, as I remained inpatient at a Boston hospital laying pregnant with my twin boys. Unable to sit up for longer than minutes a day, she watched TV with me, brought me trashy magazines and snuck me in corned beef sandwiches from Barry's Deli. (on the flip side she yelled for the nurse as I was hyperventilating- soon learning I was experiencing my very first panic attack. She rubbed my back and held my hand saying nothing; which meant everything)

My mom refused to leave after my first mastectomy even hours after DH told her I was okay and the doctors said to go home. She rushed me to the hospital when youngest was making an early arrival and stayed with me until DH arrived (deciding to stay until the little one made his entrance hours later, shortly after midnight- even though she left an entire house filled with guests, to sit with me. "Your dad can entertain them" She laughed)

The list could go on.

The fights and slammed doors at age 16 are barely a memory and have been replaced with the oodles more stories I have of the love I share with my Mom.

She gave me the strength I didn't know I had (along with my neuroses but you know, you take the good with the bad) My mom recently turned 90 and she is not the person she was, of course. But then again, who of us are?

We age. We grow. We gray. We pee more and oy more and creek more.

Yet if we try really hard, we hold onto the good and let go of the bad.

And as I look at my Mom (maybe not the person she was) she will always be the same person to me.

The woman who never gave me anything but unconditional love. The woman who always had my back. The woman who was always Mom but turned into one of my very best friends.

"We turned into our mothers" H said to me.

And how lucky we are my friend.