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I was practicing martial arts with Mom, working with a bag we had at home. My Mom, Jenna, was a martial arts instructor, so she practiced a lot and had equipment that most people didn’t.

    My name is Lily Ford and I’m twenty-five years old. I live with my parents in a kingdom on an island.

    I loved martial arts too, so I practiced as much as Mom did. Sometimes I practiced alone, sometimes with Mom and sometimes with friends who had learned martial arts with me.

    I tried many kicks and punches. I practiced for a few minutes quickly. I thought my technique was right. Then, I stopped.

    “Why aren’t you giving me tips?” I asked Mom.

    “You did everything right. I’m so proud of you.”

    She hugged me.

    I had earned my black belt years ago. I liked to know that I was good at something that meant a lot to me and Mom’s praise meant the most to me.

    “Come on,” Mom said. “I’m taking you to lunch.”

    We went to a restaurant and talked about a lot of things. Mom told me the story of what happened before she became a mother. She had been married to Dad for three years and they had been thinking about having a baby for a while. Mom hadn’t decided yet. She thought about it while she was sewing alone in her room and came to a final decision that yes she wanted to be a mother. Then, her imagination started going crazy. I knew Mom’s imagination always went crazy whenever she made a decision about something she was passionate about.

    “What did you want?” I asked. “A boy? A girl? Or a martial arts expert? How many kids did you want?”“I wanted a kid who would have something in common with three things that are important to me. Black hair like mine. Blue eyes like your father’s. And I wanted you to have skin as white as snow. That being said, if you hadn’t had any of these things, it wouldn’t have changed anything between us.”

    I was still glad I was like she imagined.

    “I know,” I said. “But why did you want me to have something in common with snow?”

    “Because I was born in winter and there was snow that day. And I always felt special when there was snow.”

    There was a superstition in the kingdom that anyone born when there was snow was insignificant.

    “Does this have anything to do with the superstition?” I asked.

    “Yes. I always wanted to convince people that it wasn’t true.”

    I took that seriously.

    “You are the furthest thing from insignificant,” I told Mom.

    “When I wanted you to have skin as white as snow, it wasn’t to prove a point to other people, but because snow means something to me.”

    “But how could the superstition make you like snow?”

    “I don’t like the superstition and that made me determined to prove it wrong. It made me want to make snow special to me. Every time I see that you have skin as white as snow, I will remember that I am important.”

    “How do I do that?” I asked.

    “Because I’m connecting snow and my connection to it to the most important person in my life,” Mom explained.I liked that and I was overwhelmed.

    And there were other things in Mom’s life that made her feel important, not just motherhood and her marriage, but also her job and how many people she has helped and her friends.