I talk to my mom every Sunday afternoon (or try to). This last Sunday we discussed how something that seems insignificant to a parent can have a remarkable effect on a child. Here are three things my mom did for me that she may not even remember.

She taught me my numbers and letters on grid paper.

A normal, unassuming piece of quadrille paper served as the basis for my learning letters, numbers, shapes, colors. She'd point at this letter and I'd say, "G!" or that color and I'd say, "orange!" Over two decades later, I can't imagine that it's a coincidence that I'm intently reading "Grid Systems in Graphic Design" by Josef Muller-Brockmann and stay up late at night reading Mark Boulton's journal.

If my birth as a graphic designer can be traced to something, it's that piece of graph paper that's probably still in her basement somewhere.

She wouldn't let me play with guns.

Never did she buy me a gun. Never did she let my father buy me a gun. G.I. Joe toys were not okay (I had to go to friends' houses for that, even then gravitating more toward Storm Shadow). All of this left me spending most of my childhood playing with Legos (which suck now), Construx, even Capsela. I was constantly designing, constructing, playing with, and fabricating entire fantasy worlds for my various creations.

Once my aunt bought me a raygun; it was very sci-fi with a big knob that controlled the 20 different sounds it made when you pulled the trigger. I pleaded with my mom to let me keep it and she agreed, under one condition. None of the "settings" could be "kill". I had soon designated all of the various sounds to exciting alternatives, like "freeze", "tickle", and "forget". Adults would play along, though I sometimes had to remind them ("No, Daddy! That's the dance ray!") and the "forget" setting didn't seem to work when it was my bedtime.

She divorced my father.

I love my father, it's not like that. He's a great guy and is a great dad. So many parents, I feel, stay together "for the children" even when the marriage itself is not meant to be. I have friends whose parents have lumbered on into old age, not quite right for one another. My parents didn't do that. Not that they gave up without a fight—adjusting their lifestyles, seeking counseling, trial separations. Eventually they sat my sister and I down and admitted that it just wasn't working.

At 13, this was very useful to hear. I immediately saw my parents not as "Mom and Dad" but as "Linda and Stan" (yes, my dad has the same name). They became people before me, with hopes and fears and strengths and weaknesses and a relationship with the world that was way bigger than merely keeping my sister and I happy and healthy. It gave me a lot to think about, from whether the married life is right for me (I had just assumed that everyone got married back then) to what it must be like to have children constantly looking to you as an example.

This last one probably isn't fair, since I'm sure my mom remembers her divorce. Still, with both of my parents now very happily remarried and even my sister is married, I have to remind myself that this potentially destructive situation was handled with utmost grace and poise by two people who, only twelve years older than me now, probably had no fucking clue what they were doing.

Bravo, kids.