Let me finish tonight with what we’re celebrating this Sunday.
Kathleen and I have been together since 1978 which is incredibly almost four decades. What we’ve done professionally is, of course, small potatoes compared to raising three children, and now having two grandchildren to boot.
That’s Michael, Thomas, Caroline, Julia and Brendan – five charming young people who see us as parents and grandparents, especially Julia and Brendan who will spend their lives thinking of us as no other than their grandparents.
Remember how hard it was to really imagine your grandpop and grandmom as your parents’ parents? It certainly was for me. To me, grandmom and grandpop and our other grandmom were simply that — people born to be grandparents and that’s all there was too it.
So on Sunday we honor the person who our children look to, always have, always will, as their Mom — the person they go to in the world in a totally different way than they do anyone else — the one who cares about them totally and without condition — who is the human definition, wherever she is — of home.
That’s an incredible role to play in this world — as incredible as being the person who gives birth to you.
And it’s that role, the one that comes to be also after you’re born, that we honor this Sunday — the Mother who is Mom.
Chris Matthews