Of all the things I wasn't prepared for, one of the top three was weather in Texas. After living three decades in California, I took the temperatures for granted. There really was no need to pay attention to forecasts or news reports. You opened the door, you went outside and the sun shone exactly as it did the day before and the day before that, and the day before that. In Texas, all bets are off.

As a kid, I would sit on the back porch and listen to the thunder and watch the lightening flash in the distance. My mom would always yell at me to get back into the house. I suppose she was afraid the lightening would find me. It's no surprise that I can still hear her voice every time I see the bolts flash across the Texas sky.

I've been hearing her voice in my head more often than not these days. Especially now that summer is almost here and October won't be far behind. I was never prepared for losing her, no matter how much I realized that she was nearing the end of her time with me. As plans for October continue to take shape, I can't help but remember some of the conversations that we had in Europe. Those trips were magical and something I have been thinking about a lot lately. We talked of so many things and I told her in Paris, that I was sorry I hadn't brought home a boy so she could see that I could indeed find someone.

"Why are you in a rush?" she asked. "Be single, have fun, do whatever you want. Play the field!"

I didn't tell her that I was indeed playing the field, but the whole conversation made me smile. She never judged, never wanted me to follow the path that was the one that was expected. Maybe she felt guilty for making me go to college when I wanted to travel the world? She never tried to talk me out of moving to San Francisco, never made me feel tied to Boston. Even she knew Massachusetts was not the place for me.

"Why do you want to come back here?" she asked incredulously, when I briefly moved back to Boston in 2000.  That Rosemarie was far brighter than she or anyone gave her credit for. She supported every decision I made, and that was something, looking back, that I took for granted.

These days, I take nothing lightly. I savor every minute, even if it's the sweltering heat of the summer to come. I am honoring my mom in lots of ways as plans for October take shape, and I try to imagine how she'd laugh at being the mother of the groom.

"I'm so cold," she could be lip read in the home movies of my parents' wedding, and she always told me how the wind that day in May 1962 froze her to the bone.

There's probably not a chance of freezing in October in Texas, and a ceremony in San Antonio was for sure the top  item that I wasn't prepared for in life. If I had her at dinner, I could tell her that indeed the lightening did find me, and it brought a whole new world to me.