The memory, the presence, of a mother is something that most of us share. Nostalgia about our moms can take many forms, especially as our society keeps changing and our definition of what it means to be a parent keeps morphing. This collection of short essays compiled by stay-at-home humorist Ann Imig proves absolutely that there is no exclusive definition of “mother” --- not in the world, not even in our own country and culture.

Imig’s anthology is nearly guaranteed to shake up your preconceptions of motherhood. What about, for example, the two men who want to raise a child? They get an offer for an egg --- from the sister of one of them. Will she be a mother? An aunt? Both? Neither? Will she have parental rights? Is she nuts to make the offer? And though she could claim biological motherhood, won’t they, too, fulfill a motherly role?

"This collection of short essays compiled by stay-at-home humorist Ann Imig proves absolutely that there is no exclusive definition of 'mother' --- not in the world, not even in our own country and culture."

As both men work through these questions, we learn from Jerry Mahoney (“More than an Aunt, Less than a Mom”) that parenting can have a lot of “gray areas.” In “Three Little Letters” we explore another “gray area”: the father who is a real mother to his daughter, not because he is at all feminine --- far from it --- but because, by adding three letters to the parental honorarium, you get “mothering,” something that he handles surprisingly well. “The Upside to Down” by Mery Smith offers a glimpse into the experience of a mother coming to accept a certain fact about her new baby: “the fold over his cute little ears, the one crease in the palm of his right hand, the speaking in his heart. It looked and sounded like Down syndrome.”

One of the more painful recollections comes from Yoon Park, in “A Much-Needed Slap in the Face.” The “slap” is symbolic, happening at the moment that college student Park’s Korean mother says to her, “I am not stupid.” Suddenly the writer realizes that in her usual cocky, dismissive way, she “had equated her not being fluent in English to her not being intelligent.” Making the best of a difficult situation is Amy Wilson (“Idiopathic”), coming to grips with the understanding that her seven-year-old son was, well, just different, different in some way that will continue to defy diagnosis, and concluding, “He’s fascinating. And he’s mine.” Eddy Jordan ("My Mother the Protector") describes his brush with extreme danger when things went horribly awry on the teacup ride at Six Flags --- and suddenly, “My mom is raising hell…moving through the crowd…reaches the control panel…decisively slams down a fist on a large red button.”

By drawing together these 56 personal vignettes, Imig, founder of the “Listen to Your Mother” national performance series, has done a service to these sometimes disparate concepts of mothers and mothering. There’s a mother for everyone in this array: funny mothers, failed mothers, mothers who are still figuring out how to mother, mothers who sacrificed, mothers who co-mothered, but above all, mothers whose memory abides --- whether for their quirks, their occasional failings, or their remarkable courage.