My mother and I share birthdays close together and by some strange fluke it so happens that Easter falls on our birthdays something like every seventeen years or something. Yesterday was her birthday and she turned 60 years young. She wanted to spend the day with all three of her daughters and that’s exactly what she got. All of us girls spent the day doing whatever she wanted which mostly included chilling with a handful of her grandchildren, eating yellow cake (plus several cupcakes since 60 candles wouldn’t fit on one cake) with cream cheese frosting and fresh strawberries, and having the most fabulous pancake breakfast known to man at the Original House of Pancakes in the Hyde Park area of Chicago where I grew up.

This may not come as a surprise, but Obama’s statement about his “typical white person” grandmother didn’t phase me at all. It didn’t offend. Nor did it occur to me to anyone would pick it up and run with it, but rhetoric makes news. I don’t even know if it’s fair to put that same line to Clinton who might utter “typical black person” because as soon as blacks cross the street from the stereotypical white person who may or may not want to mug them…well, I’m sure you can see where this could go. I care not to encourage anyone to see my side because it can turn into such an ugly argument and quite frankly, I’m on my Spring Break and don’t want to think too much.

If being typical means that my mother once died her hair pink to go to Burning Man, pierced her nose, and attends African drumming circles, so be it. If being typical assumes that my white mother has an incredibly beautiful naked woman tattooed on her back and that she takes Italian classes just to learn, fine. If my typical white mother studies Reiki and reads a 400 page book on salt, then typical she is.

Typically, I pretty much adore her and if she’s not offended by being called typical then I’m ok with it, too. But I know she’s not typical, normal, or conventional by any means. None of us are. So since it doesn’t apply to her then she’s not going to let that stop her from seeing the beauty in humanity, typical as it is.