Everything's Coming Up Roses

It's a little after Mother's Day, but as I always tell my Mom, Every day is Mother's Day!

My mom has never been a Mama Rose type, although she did ask the director of The Tragic and Horrible Life of the Singing Nun, upon being introduced, "How do we get this show to Broadway?"

This is the woman who told me at the age of 5: "Live Out Loud!"

She was so young when she had me. I don't know if she ever got to make her dreams come true. But she gave my brother and me a great love of music, literature, film and art, so it makes sense that we both turned out to be artists.

I don't think she and my dad knew what to do with me when, again at the age of 5, I proclaimed I was going to be an actress. They came to every school play, enrolled me in dance, gymnastics and music classes, asked their mothers to help finance voice lessons (thanks to both my grandmothers), and drove me to my first professional gig in San Bernadino where I played an orphan in "Annie."

As I've grown, I've been compared to her a great deal. I have a picture on my desk at my day-job, and one of the guys at work said, "Woah! I thought that was YOU!" And I take that as a compliment.

She's a beautiful woman - inside and out - and I'm proud to call her my mother and my friend. We are still learning a lot from each other.