On December 17, 1984, I had surgery to remove two inches of my left lung due to pneumonia. After two hours of surgery the doctors told my mother I had AIDS.
My mother was madly adventurous. My father was an actor - he worked with Gielgud - and my mother came from a very wealthy family. She definitely wasn't meant to marry an actor, but she eloped with him one lunch-time.
We were five kids at home, and my mother and grandmother ensured that we all had a very grounded upbringing in Madras. Even in school, I never used to tell anyone that my dad was an actor.
Mothers subject their daughters to a level of scrutiny people usually reserve for themselves. A mother's gaze is like a magnifying glass held between the sun's rays and kindling. It concentrates the rays of imperfection on her daughter's yearning for approval. The result can be a conflagration - whoosh.
I always appreciated the magnitude of my mother's imagination. She always saw beauty in what was broken, and she'd preserve it.
My mother had bought a sewing machine for me. When I went away to college, she gave me a sewing machine, a typewriter and a suitcase, and my mother made $17 a week working as a maid 12 hours a day, and she did that for me.
As children, we looked up to our maids and our nannies, who were playing in some ways the role of our mothers. They were paid to be nice to us, to look after us, teach us things and take time out of their day to be with us. As a child you think of these people as an extension of your mother.
I was going to shave it. It went in two parts. I got a bob first but it kept falling all over my face. Then it was off, short. The main reason it was long was because my mother cut it short when I was little and I was trying to make up for that.
One of my biggest gifts ever, my mother made a Yankee uniform for me as a little boy, and I wore it to bed dreaming I could pitch in the major leagues and then be a Yankee.
I'm passionate about making a difference in increasing the quality of life and survivorship for all affected by lung cancer, having lost my mother and grandmother to this terrible disease.
Personally, I love being a mother the most. I dream of taking holidays with my three kids. I want to take my kids to beaches, gardens, the farm, malls everywhere.
I always say I'm one of the toughest mama's boys you're ever gonna meet. And I say that to send a message to all the young thugs out there; that it's nothing to be ashamed of to say you love your mother.
At the end of the day, I mean, I love my father, but I was always a mama's girl growing up. I'm from the South, so there's always something about me when I'm just with my girls or even my mother. There's just a strong connection there.
Am I feminist? I don't know. I'm not really sure what that is. I am all up for equality to a certain extent, although in the home, I do feel this is where the mother excels and the man needs to step back a bit. My family is from Nigeria, and this is our culture.
My mother works in a bank, and my dad is the head of my management team and also works in finance.
I'm part Spanish. My paternal grandfather came from Spain via Singapore to Manila. On my mother's side it's more mixture, with a Filipino mother and a father who was Scotch Irish-French; you know, white American hybrid. And I also have on my father's side a great-great-grandmother who was Chinese. So, I'm a hybrid.
My mother worked for a white family that lived in one of the mansions on the beach. The husband in the family was a lawyer; he worked for a firm in New Orleans.
My mother's mantra was, 'How would it look to the neighbors?' And so you don't do anything because you're worried about how it would look to the neighbors.
Until 1943 I received no stipend. I was able to support myself as my mother was the daughter of a relatively wealthy cotton manufacturer.
I never saw any of my dad's stories. My mother said he had piles and piles of manuscripts.
