I learned more from my mother than from all the art historians and curators who have informed me about technical aspects of art history and art appreciation over the years.

My father was a member of the Teamsters Union in California where he helped to organize better health care for workers. My mother worked for more than 20 years on an assembly line.

Americans want and deserve a broad array of health insurance choices so they can identify those that best fit their own individual or family needs. These choices expand when we allow free enterprise to foster innovation not smother it with taxes and one-size fits all ideology.

Children born to teens have less supportive and stimulating environments poorer health lower cognitive development and worse educational outcomes. Children of teen mothers are at increased risk of being in foster care and becoming teen parents themselves thereby repeating the cycle.

I think about my parents all the time especially on Sunday when I'm at Mass. My mother always said 'We do not pray to win elections. We pray for people's health we pray that God's will be done we pray that we do our best. But we do not pray to win elections.'

I think all Americans believe in human rights. And health is an often overlooked aspect of basic human rights. And it's one that's easily corrected. The reason I say that is that many of the diseases that we treat around the world I knew when I was a child. My mother was a registered nurse. And they no longer exist in our country.

My grandmother had six kids - one died as an infant - and she was dirt-poor and all her kids got an education. And my mom grew up poor. And they both worked so hard and cultivated so much of their own happiness. I wanted to have that like an amulet. Not like armor but like a magic feather. Like Dumbo's magic feather.

My mother was a public school teacher in Virginia and we didn't have any money we just survived on happiness on being a happy family.

You know the passage where Scarlett voices her happiness that her mother is dead so that she can't see what a bad girl Scarlett has become? Well that's me.

Completeness? Happiness? These words don't come close to describing my emotions. There truly is nothing I can say to capture what motherhood means to me particularly given my medical history.