M is for the million things she gave me.

Someone wrote in after the last blog and asked what it is my parents had said to me to install the good values I have. Seeing this stopped me for two seconds. The first second was spent thinking something along the lines of “I have good values?” In relation to the Gambino crime family, perhaps. And the next second was spent trying to recall moments where my parents spoke to me about how they wanted me to behave.

Here’s what I know my parents believed was important. Or rather, my mother -- between my father dying when I was nine and mothers taking a larger interest in the day-to-day affairs of children, I am far more a product of my mother’s belief system than my father’s belief system. Here is what my mother believed:

She believed in thank-you notes. She believed in thank-you notes to such an extent that I didn’t get to play with or wear the presents until the thank you note went out. If you are about to tell me what a mean mother I had, let me warn you that Daughter abides by the same rule.

She believed in the difference between “Can” and “May”; using them interchangeably led to conversations like:

“Can I have that last slice of pizza?”

“If you are asking me whether you are physically capable of grabbing it, I believe you are. If you are asking me whether you may have it, not until you eat some carrots…”

She believed that a child mouthing (or as she put it, “Lipping”) off to her parent might make for a wonderful Neil Simon comedy, it led to anarchy and car bombs in real life, and had to be squashed with surgical precision.

As far as world view goes, she is far more of a doer than a talker. She has volunteered my entire life, and she has usually volunteered at things which are essential and singularly unglamorous. Say there is a fund-raising ball being mounted. One person gets to taste all the catering companies, to pick just the right salmon en croute. Another person gets to call famous people and seduce them into coming. My mother would volunteer to do the bookkeeping. And the year she does that, the checks get accounted for, deposited, and the money gets out to those who need it, faster than ever before.

But are you asking me what sage advice I remember getting from my sainted mother? Oh, that’s easy. I was in the tenth grade, and I must have been staring at someone’s Vogue magazine at school during lunch, because I came home from school and informed my mother I had decided my career plan for adulthood was to marry for money. I don’t remember why I thought this sounded like such a good idea. Maybe I decided having a weekend place in Taos would never require me to use Geometry.

My mother, prepping dinner, never turned a hair, and answered me like a shot.

“Okay, but that would make you a whore.”

“Oh, right. Never mind.”

I must tell you, my mother hates this story. Hates it. She says, with some justification, “I gave you advice and counsel for eighteen years, and this is the one you remember?”

So, readers, let me be perfectly clear. My mother gave me tons of good advice throughout my childhood. I just can’t remember any of it. I remember this little interaction because even though it came from out of the clear blue, she answered it evenly and without ruffle. She didn’t say not to do it or that it was morally wrong, she just asked me to decide whether I was comfortable wearing that title. Many women have decided skiing in Gstaad takes the sting right out of the connotation. To her credit, my mother also had the grace not to point out that women who marry for money usually don’t resemble me.

So, readers, I have one for you. What is the most notable advice a parent, or parent figure, ever gave you? It can be notably good, notably bad or, in the case of my mother’s advice, just the perfect response to the unexpected question.

Tag, you’re it.