Despite the fact my mother tried to kill me several times, she is an amazing mom.

It does not matter that when I was an infant, she did not strap my baby carrier to the bench seat of her dad’s 1967 Buick, and, on one particularly sharp turn, I went sliding across the car and out the door into the street. Traffic was light, and the baby carrier broke my fall. It does not matter that she misread the instructions on several bottles of my baby formula watering them down so that I actually lost weight in my first few weeks of life. I survived, and I haven’t lost weight since. It does not matter that as I got older she fed me things like salmon patties and chicken livers. I learned to appreciate the finer things in life … like the McDonald’s Drive Thru. It does matter that one Halloween she dressed me up as Dolly Parton, then sent me into the neighborhood with my other friends who were dressed as heavily armed cowboys and police officers. I got to experience the burden of women’s undergarments, and my friends got their first look at a cross–dresser.

My mom did the best she could, and that’s all I could ever ask.

She rushed me through the unfamiliar streets of downtown Atlanta looking for an emergency room and the doctors that could bring down my 105–degree fever. I was still a baby. She had just started a new teaching job in the slums of Central Georgia, and my dad was not around. Instead of waiting at the emergency room for hours with a sick child, she drove back home and put me in a tub of ice water. The fever subsided.

I was too young to remember that incident, but I do remember my mom throwing a baseball with me when my dad was not around. She couldn’t throw very well. In fact, her fake acrylic nails scraped the ball as she tossed it to me, and it never traveled more than five feet in the air. Whether she meant to or not, she taught me how to catch a ground ball. And she watched me on the ball fields in the rain or freezing cold or under a sweltering southern sun for 13 straight years. It didn’t matter whether I was playing second base or riding the pine, she was there.

She was and is always there. Now that I’m a parent, I can see that is the most important job. We may feed our kids salmon patties when they’d prefer Happy Meals, and we may throw them ground balls when they’re looking for line drives, but at least we’re there.

My mom may not have taught me how to strap in a car seat, but she taught me that time is the greatest gift you can give as a parent. For that, I am eternally grateful.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mama!