Happy Birthday to my mother, Diane ... here we are dancing together for the first (only?) time at my cousin Aaron's wedding a few years ago. It isn't polite to ask a lady's age, so I have no idea which birthday this is. I would guess she's somewhere in her late 40s. She's a retired schoolteacher (kindergarten in inner-city Flint MI is a much tougher environment than you might think), a world traveller and collects Hummel figurines, but her favorite hobby would probably be bargain-hunting, a pasttime she first took up while raising two children alone on a substitute teacher's "salary." When she was a young girl she had a crush on Pat Boone, and at one point she was married to my father (or so I've been told).

I love you, mom.