tmwcd Mother's day

What I wouldn't give for one more hug...

I meant to write this on Mother's Day. But it doesn't really matter because I think about my mom all the time. She's this constant presence, so real sometimes that I still go to pick up the phone to call her when anything good or bad happens in my life. And boy did I want to call her last night, when I won a Gracie Award for Best Writing for The Man Who Calculated Death. The Gracies have been around for 50 years (named after the legendary Gracie Allen) and they honor women in media, and since I've spent my last 35 years as a journalist, it felt lovely to be included.

But...as fun as it was to get dressed up and be in a ballroom full of smart, incredible, ceiling busting, genre defining women (and a few great men too!), I came home...a little flat. I had my Gracie in hand, a beautiful little statue-ette with my name engraved on it, proof that my podcast was recognized and found worthy. But Gracie is just cold, beautifully poured metal, and what I wanted was much more human. I wanted my mom. And while she hasn't been at the other end of that phone line for a dozen years, the urge was viceral.

What would she say about this achievement for a story she started and left for me to finish? I can hear her laugh with joy. She would tell me how proud she is of me and how she knew I could do it all along. She wouldn't even need to say that she always believed in me, because that's something I always knew. Then, we would move on and talk about more important things: like my son's induction that day into the Spanish Honors Society. Like the food poisoning that had laid me so low the day before that I almost didn't attend the Gracie Awards. We would talk about when we were going to see each other next and all the little things that social media or AI or a Gracie Award can never duplicate. I can hear us chatting in my heart and it's the best conversation ever.

50th Anniversary Gracie Awards, May 2025