I don’t deal with death very well. My brother, John Candy, my dad, my mom, Brandon Tartikoff just a couple of weeks ago. I mean, you lose a lot of people in your life, and that’s one thing I am constantly working on – pain management.
There are a lot of people who helped make Queen Latifah who she is today. I don’t forget, but a lot of people do and get big heads. My mom will make me walk the dogs or take out the trash when I go home. I’m not allowed to get a big head; I’ve still got to do the simple things in life.
My mom passed away a day before high school started, and her dream was for me to be a full rock and roll guy, and play drums in a band.
Mom was 50 when my Dad died. She got on a bus every weekday for years, and rode 40 miles each morning to Madison. She earned a new degree and learned new skills to start her small business. It wasn’t just a new livelihood. It was a new life.
My mom and dad have always, always, and continue to be the most incredible citizens of the world and most generous in quiet ways, that I strive to do even a fraction of what they do.
I played with dolls until I was 15. My mother encouraged it because my older sister got married when she was 15, so Mom thought that the longer I stayed with dolls, the better.
I had to stay in the house a lot because my Mom didn’t want to see me on the news. I wasn’t a bad child. She just didn’t want me in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The national treasure that is Diana Ross is a dim light compared with who she is as a mother. My mom paved the way not only for my career but also for who I am as a human being.
It was super stressful at first because it is my first child. The first minute I saw her and the first minute I heard her cry is really when things kicked in. You just become a mom and you roll with it.
As I celebrate life, I can’t help but think how young my mom was when she died of a heart attack at 53. My mom didn’t get to meet her grandchildren, but I’m determined to watch mine grow up.
From my mom telling me ‘no’ to now telling everyone I’m the champion, and she’s so proud of me, and to prove to a lot of people – who didn’t believe in me, who didn’t think I was going to be here – that I’m here, and I did it. It’s been a roller coaster of emotions; it’s amazing.
I feel like I’ve lived quite a sheltered life, like my mom and dad were quite protective of me.
My mom graduated from the University of Michigan, which is a great school. Then she got her Master’s from NYU. She wanted to be an actress, so when she graduated, she had a dream, and she started following it. She moved to New York and took acting classes with people like Denzel Washington.
I was always a drama queen. I remember playing in the kitchen, trying to get my mom to think I was dead and call the police. When she didn’t, I would cry. I was always theatrical. I don’t think any of my relatives are surprised.
I don’t know who had a more tiresome, wall-to-wall schedule than my father, and I know what it’s like to be a kid in that situation. He was gone a lot. He needed to be. I understood it. So did my mom.
My mom is Jamaican and Chinese, and my dad is Polish and African-American, so I had a pretty diverse culinary background to work with.
My mom I remember, she used to do so many things, I don’t know how she did so many things at the same time, she was amazing.
What greater aspiration and challenge are there for a mother than the hope of raising a great son or daughter?
Now I tell everyone, ‘Just become a mom if you can’ – it is so amazing, and God answers all your prayers, and all those things that you worry about don’t matter.
An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.
My mom has been calling me Peep my whole life. That’s how I got the name.
For some students, school is the only place where they get a hot meal and a warm hug. Teachers are sometimes the only ones who tell our children they can go from an Indian reservation to the Ivy League, from the home of a struggling single mom to the White House.
I rarely went to the mosque, I never fasted, and I only prayed namaaz on the holy nights because my mom bugged me about it.
My mom is a yoga instructor: 100% black with dreadlocks.
I’m sure that my mom would have been happy with any path I chose.
So, I remember when I was a kid, I was waiting for my mom to come home when she was working late, and, you know, I was like, ‘Oh my God, what happened to her? Is she OK? Did something happen to her getting in the car?’ I was a little kid. But those are actually early onsets of anxiety.
Whenever I feel mom-guilt, or I feel pressure to be a better mom – to cook salmon on a bed of quinoa for my kids – I just think to myself, ‘I… have… suffered… enough.’ And then I feel fine about feeding my toddler a bag of chips for dinner.
My mom eventually got out to Oxnard and started a produce company and was in the strawberry business. My pops was out of the picture by the time I was 7.
I grew up in a family of Republicans. And when I was 18 and registering to vote, my mom’s only instruction was ‘You just go in and pull the big Republican lever.’ That’s my welcome to adulthood. She’s like, ‘No, don’t even read it. Just pull the Republican lever.
You know, I loved math. My mom was a math teacher.
I’m fighting hard; I’m training hard. I’m still walking over people and stepping over people to get where I’m going, and I would really like to give back, especially to my mom, who was there for me when I was a kid.
I look at my father. He is one of my heroes. He is such an incredible, classy man. He was such a great father and such a great husband in so many ways, and we lived through some pretty tough times losing my mom. When I see all that he did, I think, ‘Wow, that’s a really wonderful man.’
My mom always taught me – you know, little boys listen to their moms too much – that whatever you put into something is what you’re going to get out of it.
Why do grandparents and grandchildren get along so well? The mother.
One moment I can be happy and laughing, but then it comes over me. It’s my mom.
My mom has made it possible for me to be who I am. Our family is everything. Her greatest skill was encouraging me to find my own person and own independence.
Good food and a warm kitchen are what makes a house a home. I always tried to make my home like my mother’s, because Mom was magnificent at stretching a buck when it came to decorating and food. Like a true Italian, she valued beautification in every area of her life, and I try to do the same.
I love my mom and dad.
I’ve seen my mom confined to a wheelchair in the last three years of her life. Both her knees had given way, and there was no way she could undergo surgery at her age. Even though I was concerned for her, I didn’t know at that time what she had to go through.
I grew up in what some would call an immaculately clean home. I hated my mom a little for it. I wasn’t allowed to paint my nails, since they’d chip and ‘look trashy.’ My brother and I didn’t run around in clothes that had holes or were stained.
I don’t have anything against my mom, but my family has no emotional connection to each other.
My dad was the one who really loved basketball, and he was the one that put the basketball in my hands, and my mom was ‘Team Mom’ of all my teams. I used to play for three or four teams at once and she would just spend her entire afternoon driving me from practice to practice to practice.
My heroes always are mostly my parents – my father especially, and my mom, who’s passed on already. My dad is a very strong man, and by him being educated, and a principal and school superintendent over 37 years, he plays such a big role in my life.
If I go on dates, my mom is always with me. She’s always there making sure I’m all right. Like if I go to see a movie with a boy, she’ll go to dinner next door.
My mom and dad were divorced, and although they got along very well, my mom thought American television was reprehensible, so I was raised on the BBC. I kind of agreed with her. We watched American news, though.
I never get to go to movies, because I’m a mom.
Looking back, I think I was always musical. My dad was very musical, and I think my mom was musical.
I was born and raised in the high desert of Nevada in a tiny town called Searchlight. My dad was a hard rock miner. My mom took in wash. I grew up around people of strong values – even if they rarely talked about them.
Completeness? Happiness? These words don’t come close to describing my emotions. There truly is nothing I can say to capture what motherhood means to me, particularly given my medical history.
What is free time? I’m a single mother. My free moments are filled with loving my little girl.
My mom’s an artist in every way. She’s a painter, a photographer. She’s a wanderer – always searching, always seeing. I guess you could say my mom gave me her eyes.
‘Mom’ is an emotional family drama that’s also thrilling. It’s the story about a mother and a daughter, their emotions, and how their lives change. Being a mother myself helped me understand those emotions better.
My dad’s a Jew, and my mom’s a WASP, so that should pretty much say it all. It was a comically dysfunctional family.
My mom didn’t ever think I would take to acting because I was a very shy, very reserved kind of child. But obviously, something changed!
