The day I realized I was my mother’s daughter was the day I realized I had voluntarily decided to spend my Saturday morning vacuuming, disinfecting and listening to Sinatra.

I looked up in the mirror mid dust-buster-sashay and saw my unkempt ponytail bouncing along in time to the beat of Tony Bennett and Frank’s version of “New York, New York.” I shrieked, dropped the vacuum and immediately started re-evaluating my priorities.

My mom is the polar opposite of any facet of the vehemently Type-A half of my personality. I once suggested to her that 90 percent of her waking time was spent daydreaming in one of the following five categories: kitties, babies, cupcakes, shiny jewelry and/or anything pink. Interestingly enough, she didn’t disagree with me. In fact, that day she changed her Twitter account (by the way, my mom was one of the first people I knew who had a Twitter) to “pinkfuzzylogic”.

When I first got my acceptance to Stanford, I think my whole family cried (we’re real schmucks like that). But upon receiving my financial aid letter (or should I say, “lack of financial aid” letter), I think my whole family cried again. I’m not going to launch into a detailed critique of the financial aid system at Stanford but here’s the moral of the story: my parents are divorced so we had to report my mom, stepdad’s and dad’s income, but it wound up that my mom (who has the lowest income of all three) had to pay the highest percentage of all three. As a result, the decision to send me to Stanford was a real sacrifice for her, and she drives two hours a day through ice-encrusted, sub-zero North Dakotan blizzards to her job as the director of marketing at a college in Whapeton, N.D. (population: 4) so I can lounge about in my California penthouse and occasionally write a paper.

But right before my mom made the decision about whether I should take a full ride somewhere else or if Stanford was worth putting a serious dent in her pink, shiny jewelry purchasing power, she sat me down for a serious conversation. “Molly,” she said. “I want you to be able to do this, and I don’t see any way that we can keep it from you. But I have one request. When you graduate from Stanford and make tons of money, I want you to buy your 80-year-old mother heated floors.”

A couple weeks ago I got a package in the mail from my mom. In it was a brochure for a heated floor installation service with a big smiley face scribbled in Sharpie across it. It seems a strange request, but you never will understand the true significance of what heated floors mean to my mom until you’ve spent 6 months of every year waking up at 5:00 A.M. to a -30 degree frozen tundra. In some ways, the request for heated floors has evolved into a running inside joke between a mother and her daughter, between friends. But in many other ways, it signifies something that goes far deeper than underground wiring. The woman who has given everything for her daughter was asking her daughter to make sure her feet are warm when she’s old.

I’ve come a long way since that first Saturday morning Sinatra realization. As a freshman in my first quarter at Stanford, I needed to see myself and be seen as an ambitious intellectual, immune to any of the “pinkfuzzylogic” my mom may have instilled in me. Three years later, I’m perhaps only just now realizing how important that pinkfuzzylogic is. It may not be tangible, it may not be rigidly defined and it may not be subject to a proof, but that pinkfuzzylogic that drives every mother to comfort a crying baby, kiss a boo-boo and to put the interests of those who need her before her own is one of the most powerful and fundamentally beautiful forces of human nature.

Here’s to the woman who gave up finishing her master’s degree so she could stay home and dress up her new, bald baby girl in pink dresses and shiny headbands. Here’s to the woman who stayed up until two in the morning while working a full-time job, playing Pretty, Pretty Princess with her sick, snaggle-toothed seven-year-old and telling her that she was the prettiest princess in the whole world. And finally, here’s to the woman who drives two hours everyday through blizzards and black ice so her 20-year-old daughter she sees four times a year can go to Stanford.

I haven’t seen her for a few months, but Mom, I will always be your baby girl in a pink dress. And as soon as I can afford it (aka as soon as the Daily starts paying their columnists per word) I’m buying you heated floors.

Molly is wishing ALL mothers a Happy Mothers Day. If you just realized you forgot that Mother’s Day was this past Sunday, e-mail [email protected] for good Hallmark e-card recommendations.