My life has taken many twists and turns, some good and some not so good, but no matter what has happened to or by me, the one thing in my life that has been the most constant and thus fundamental, has always been my mother, Sharran Moynihan, but I call her Ma. The most obvious contribution she has made to my life, but definitely worth and must be mentioned is that she gave life to me; she suffered through both the pregnancy and my birth and had she not, then I would not be. Even when my father, Dennis Moynihan, was living with us, he was hardly ever truly part of the family because he spent most of his time looking at the world through the bottom of a bottle. As a result, Ma had to fulfill roles of being both my mother and my father. She played sports with my brother Liam and I, rode bikes with us, and talked with us about girls. She also cooked, cleaned, walked us to school, dressed us, and everything else she believed a mother was supposed to do and be. She is also the one who disciplined my brother and me because my father did not know how to limit his physical force for juveniles.  To top it all off, she almost always held a job while she was doing all of this, and sometimes she was also in school. My mother must have a hidden cape somewhere because I swear she is Super Woman; there was never a day that either my brother or I went without food; we always had everything we needed and some of what we wanted. Most importantly, we always knew that we were loved and that home was a safe place for us. I learned more from what my mother did than what she said and through observing her what I learned was how to work no matter what my feelings about the world were at a given moment. I learned that family was the most important gift, and that translates into the family I have chosen and whom have earned my respect and trust. I learned that sometimes life throws us curve balls, but that with the willingness to meet life’s challenges, no obstacle is too daunting to overcome or circumvent. She taught me that it is okay for a man to cry, but also that I am never to submit to injustice without protest and that there is a just solution to every problem. I am my mother’s son; she bestowed the best of herself into me and by she living her life as best she could, her actions formed and informed my perception of the world and molded me into the man that I am today.