I could  tell you the things you already know—about Charlotte Elaine Davis Taylor and her ninety remarkable trips around the sun. But legends, as they say, have already been told. So instead, I want to speak of an inner world—the kind we all carry within us, though we rarely invite others fully into it.

Because what stays with us most in this life are the evocative moments: the way someone makes us feel, the quiet, enduring power of their presence. And Mom… she made me feel seen. Safe. Encouraged. Cheered for.

Mom has always cheered for her children and grands and greats. I felt it at U.S. Open golf qualifiers, Little League baseball, and the many encouraging notes she gave me throughout life. She was in my corner—pulling for me, rooting, supporting, whooping, hollering, always faithful. 

She also gave me something even rarer: Freedom that came with trust. Maybe out of survival instinct, maybe out of faith—but she turned me loose. Riding bikes to Sooner Park at four years old. Walking to kindergarten alone at five. Trick-or-treating with friends. Long drives—Florida, Houston, Albuquerque, to play golf tournaments at the age of nineteen. Somehow she let me go. That kind of trust is a kind of love.

But it wasn’t just distance she allowed—it was presence, too. Mom came near. Church. Neighborhood. Home. Backyard. Kitchen. I always felt that home wasn’t just a place—it was her. Love, baked in. Acceptance, without question. I grew up in a small, intimate world, and that world was wrapped in warmth and belonging.

But she also led me into a larger world. She must have read to me as a toddler, though I don’t remember. What I do remember is being welcomed into a kind of exclusive club—readers, thinkers, dreamers and those who have library cards of their own. The smell of old bindings and industrial cleaner and polished floors. I couldn’t believe they let us take books home on the honor system. She took me into that incredible world of everywhere. 

She bought  World Book Encyclopedia sets from door-to-door salesmen. She read in the car on vacations. We always had easy to read copies of Reader’s Digest. And harder books, the Bible and thick novels.

Words matter to Mom. Stories matter. Scripture matters. The Word made flesh matters. It’s not just what she read, but how she lived it.

“In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God. And the Word was God.”

Words are like seeds, they are gifts pointing to realities beyond themselves while simultaneously drawing on what has been. Seeds are self-giving in that they bring life only by means of their own death, which means that each planting of a seed or word requires dependent participation, the loosening of soil with tools. And it requires watering. I look at the picture of thirteen greats and eleven grands along with her five children and see the self-giving seeds of love and life. 

Mom is the picture of God as a mother—comforting, cooking breakfast, rocking me to sleep. Like Jesus as a mother hen brooding over her chicks, looking down on Jerusalem, weeping, loving, dying, like a seed buried in the soil. 

That’s the world she gave me. Full of words that have been planted in tilled earth, watered, and prayed over. A world small enough to feel like home, and big enough to dream boldly. For ninety years, she has planted and tended and watered. Thank you mom. I love you, 

Happy Birthday, Mom.