10 Things I Love about Your Mother

Taken randomly from a list of a million

Happy Mother’s Day! If you’re new to Raising Myles, Welcome!

I write letters to my newborn son, Myles, sharing my journey as a first-time dad and spreading the love I didn't experience myself. If you’ve been here before — thank you for coming back. If you’re new here, here are some favorites written to Myles about my best friend, his mother.

• How I Met Your Mother

• My Wife’s Love Affair - It’s exactly what you don’t think

• Three Months after I Met Your Mother

• How I Proposed to Your Mother

  ---

Recently I decided to dig a little deeper and explore some topics around fatherhood, my own upbringing, and what it means to be raising a Black son. For the foreseeable future, I’ll be keeping all poems to Myles open to free subscribers and his Monthly Mylestones too, but I will be paywalling some of these letters and slowly archiving past letters. You can read more about this decision and my thinking in the letter below I sent last week to all readers.

Dear Reader,

A gentle heads up: Next week's letter to Myles will be behind a paywall. It explores how nice people are when we are traveling with him. I can’t help but wonder how long it will last. Last week letter talks about what it means to be a Fly in Buttermilk.

I almost didn’t share this because it felt too cliché. But since when is love cliché? Why would I pass up an opportunity to love on my queen?

---

10 Things I Love about Your Mother

Dear Myles,

1. I mean, have you seen her?

   

2. Her Red Velvet Cupcakes with hand-whipped cream cheese frosting and pecans on top have ruined me. I can no longer eat them if they are not made by her. Some people bake, but your mother gets busy. Sweet potato to apple pie, brownies, and banana bread too.

3. We have a time, every time, together. Silly ones especially.

   meetmandm

   

   A post shared by @meetmandm

4. It’s not that I’m hard to love, but when I met her, it was the first time someone made me feel like I was easy to love.

5. I met her in September of 2016. That November, we drove seventeen hours from NY to Alabama for Thanksgiving. In the summer, we took a trip to France. Brooklyn was all I knew. And now, because of her, I get to see the world with the person I love the most.

6. I grew up in a small family: my brother, grandmother, and my mother. Your mother introduced me to my new family in the South. And now I have two dozen nephews and nieces. I always knew she’d be a great mom, but the first time I saw her with them, it was just confirmation. She is a great mom.

7. She’s my best friend, but the kind of friend that will tell you the truth even if it’s not what you want to hear.

8. She shows up for everyone and everything. She’s taught me that we should always lead with love, even if it’s not always shown in return; it always comes back double fold.

9. Out of all the people on the planet, she chose me to do life with.

10. We created you.

    

Love,

Daddy

P.S: Wifey, if you’re reading this, thank you for choosing me. I’d choose you 1000 times over.

Appreciation Time: Thank you to

Carmelia

and Wendy for recently becoming paid subscribers and joining me in this journey on going deeper. I appreciate you for supporting this work with your hard earned money.

---

Three pieces about Mothers’s I loved this week:

Rachel Leeke

- For Mothers

Maggie Cubes, White Diamonds, and Susu. Rachel piece reminded me of every Caribbean mother I’ve ever met in my life.

NJ

- Cooking With Seawater

NJ piece reminded me of how much our Mothers, especially the ones that come from all the beautiful islands, have given up and sacrificed for their children to have a better life. I wonder if my own mother misses “how the ocean smells surrounded by trees, not skyscrapers.”

Caroline Cala Donofrio

- I Cried While Writing This

Caroline’s essay made me think about my mother-in-law, who never got to meet my son, and my wife, who never got to introduce her mother to him as well. I'm always considering how to hold space for her on days like this.

---

Let me know your thoughts:

1. Which one of the million reasons resonated with you?

2. What feelings does Mother’s Day bring up for you?

3. Who’s someone you feel safe and secure with?

4. Take a look at one of the writer’s pieces I mentioned above, and let me know which resonates with you.

---

Want more of Myles’ Letters?

• Last week you met your Grandfather

• Read about My Wife’s Love Affair - It’s exactly what you don’t think

• Have you ever been Cooking in the Bathroom kind of tired?

• Check out Carrying the Gift, Holding the Love

• Read about Our first Father’s Day.