It helps, I think, that my mother had me when she was quite young, so our ages and experiences aren’t really all that different, although she was born at the end of the baby boom and I was born at the end of Gerald Ford’s weird, brief reign. We can borrow each other’s clothes — we have generally overlapping taste and sizes — and since she’s always up for a stiff drink or a dirty joke, we usually have fun together. She also looks great, even in the middle of her sixties, with smooth skin and a cool short haircut. But best of all for me, and I think for her, is that she is still the one I call when I feel like chatting, the one I want to talk to about all the little things, even though here I am, a grown up. I’m forty years old.