Your love is like the Arizona sun:
Always there, no matter what I do.
Bathed in light, I feel my love for you,
But words are gone before I have begun.
I don’t know why I find it hard to say
The things that rest so deeply in my heart.
It seems almost impossible to start,
As though they’re too ungainly to display.
I cherish you and what you feel for me.
I’m lucky that I have you for a mom.
I love you with a love that’s sweet and calm,
And vast, like some unending inner sea.
You’re the one I’m with when I’m alone;
You’re the place within my heart that’s home.

Your legacy must be both love and fear.
I know that when you died, you feared for me.
The family curse you carried in your breast
Was not a gift you wanted to pass on.

But fear of it, just like my love for you,
Must linger in my heart, unwelcome guest!
And as I weep for your too early death,
I also can hear rumblings of my own.

Ah, Mother! We are linked like paper dolls,
A line of little cutouts in a row.
I see my clearest memories in my mirror
And feel your anguish bloom beneath my breast.

For this, my love for you is more, not less.
In our misfortune there’s a common grace:
For me, in that you must have grieved my burden;
For you, in that you must have mine foreseen.

You’ve been my ‘nother mother since
My mother passed away,
And what your love has given me
I never can repay.

I wish that I could be for you
What you have been for me,
But though you’re going through tough times,
Your mom I cannot be.

Still, I will be all I can
And give you all my love,
For you’ve the best, most selfless heart
A person could dream of.

You were my mother and my friend,
Which was unusual.
Somehow our characters still blend:
Your wisdom and my will.

I turned, and you were there for me;
I spoke, you understood.
I felt cared for, but also free;
You loved, and I was good.

I’m fortunate that I was born
To someone just like you;
I love you still. Though you are gone,
You live in what I do.

You took us in and loved us as your own
Though you were old enough to need some rest.
Now you are eighty and alone,
Rattling on within your empty nest.
Though we no longer live within your doors,
You will always live within our hearts.
I think of you, and that sweet thought restores
My happiness, as my own Red Sea parts.
This you’ve done for me, more than the toil,
The prostrate nights, the scarce funds spent, the pain:
Your love and selflessness have been the soil
In which my life can always bloom again.
I cannot think what I would do or be
Without the love that you have given me.