I usually cede the blog to Mom on this day, search among her papers and writings, find the words, type them here. But today is a milestone birthday: Mom would have been 100 today.

She always deplored February 1 — the cold, the snow. At least once in my lifetime she spent the day entirely alone because she was snowed in. We were grown and out of the house, and Dad was away.

Today I wake to severe weather advisories, single-digit wind chills, a February 1 that proves everything Mom ever said about it.

But to me, February 1 was always special. No snow, ice or gloom could erase the fact that this is the day my mother came into this world. And no polar vortex will spoil it today.