mother

I am lucky to have had an attentive, curious and loving dad and heart-smart, down-to-earth, gifted mother. They changed the outlooks of their own lives and have never forgotten the people and organizations that helped them dream bigger than their circumstances should have allowed.

My dad was the district attorney of New Orleans for about 30 years. And when he opened his campaign headquarters back in the early '70s, when I was 5 years old, my mother wanted me to play the national anthem. And they got an upright piano on the back of a flatbed truck and I played it.

My mother told me, 'Always do your best,' and my dad says, 'It's important to be humble. That's the key. They're not there for you. You're there for them.'

I have a memory of my mother kneeling in front of a cabinet in our home, tenderly cradling her wedding china. We never used the plates; she died in her 40s without ever letting herself enjoy these gorgeous pieces. I told myself that I would use my precious items.

Whenever I get married, it will be a Bengali wedding. If I won't have a Bengali wedding, my mother won't come. She has warned me. So, I am going to have a Bengali wedding for sure.

Somebody ripped their pants open at my wedding, dipping my mother. My mother is not a lady who throws herself into a dip that often, so I don't think he thought she was really going to do it.

Often, what makes my job so exciting is designing for the mother whose dream has been to wear one of my hats at her child's wedding. I feel as responsible for making her feel like a million dollars as I do for somebody in the public eye.

I sang a song at my sister's wedding. My mother forced me into that, too. But that one felt all right.

I learned hard lessons in life; I had to because I had so much happen: My mother died my sophomore year in high school. The next year, same day, my brother dropped dead. Two years after that, I got married because my girlfriend got pregnant. The year after my wedding, my father - who I had only recently met - died.

My mother says I didn't open my eyes for eight days after I was born, but when I did, the first thing I saw was an engagement ring. I was hooked.

My first ever sex scene in a movie was in 'Superbad.' Because I was 17, for legal reasons my mother had to be on the set. It was real awkward, but it worked out OK because when I watched the movie with her, the sex scene wasn't awkward because she'd been right there when it happened.

My late mother moved back to her parents' homeland in the 1990s when Ukraine and Russia, along with the thirteen other former Soviet republics, became independent states. Drawing on her experience as a lawyer in Canada, she served as executive officer of the Ukrainian Legal Foundation, an NGO she helped to found.

As a legal matter, my mother is an American citizen by birth.

Life was a lot simpler when what we honored was father and mother rather than all major credit cards.

I'm sure mothers are important across every culture, but particularly in Korean society, the role of the mother is of great importance.

Even though Chinese society was really closed, there were two windows for me to explore the world. One was from my mother and grandmother, the unseen and invisible world. Another window was brought from my father's side, those classic and Western books.

I'm 23 years old. I might just be my mother's child, but in all reality, I'm everybody's child. Nobody raised me; I was raised in this society.

Mother Nature comes up against reality, and the reality is that the system doesn't work.