Author's Note: Real quickly I just wanted to explain that the format of this story is probably going to be a bit unorthodox, but as far as this first "chapter" goes...don't worry. It won't all be like this. But I think this is going to first and foremost be a character study, so I just wanted to give the reader some other characters' impressions of the main character. A new chapter should be up relatively soon, but I thought I'd just give a bit of a teaser as to what's coming up. Thanks for reading- reviews are always appreciated.

Sierra Autumn Willows, age 5

I love my mom. She is pretty. She makes good grilled cheese and she can cut apples really good. Her clothes are pretty and she smells pretty and sometimes she reads to me before I go to bed. I love my mom because she loves my dad a lot. They kiss a lot so they really love each other! My mom is cool too. One time we were at my brother's baseball game and someone hit the ball wrong and it flew over at us, and mom catched it!! She threw it back and all the people clapped. It was really cool.

Sean Cody Willows, age 8

I guess my mom is pretty cool. All my friend's dads really like her, and they're cool, so I guess she must be cool, too. She likes to write. She never buys birthday cards or anything for us, she always writes them herself. That's cool, I guess. I don't know what else she likes. Nice clothes, I guess. And dad. She loves dad a lot. They kiss all the time, and it's really gross. One good thing about my mom is she never yells. But she can get mad sometimes, for sure. And she cries a lot, too. Anything can make her cry. Dad can always calm her down, though. People tell me that my mom and I look a lot alike. My sisters don't look anything like me. My mom and I both have yellow hair and round noses and we burn really easy if we're in the sun for too long. I guess she likes sports like I do, too, 'cause at one of my baseball games, my mom caught a foul ball and threw it back to the umpire. Justin Delvito told me after the game that his big brother Will said my mom is a MILF. What does that even mean?? I was going to ask dad but I forgot to. Or I could ask my mom, but I don't really like asking her stuff. She doesn't like to talk. She likes to write.

Regan Eleanor Willows, age 16

Ah, yes. Dear old mom.

Here are the simple facts: my mother is (Sarah) Amy Willows, resident MILF of Greenwich, Connecticut. How do I know of this title? Well, things like that are hard to ignore when you hear them around high school and are asked straight-up by someone how you feel, being the daughter of such a person. Fine, I'll get it out of the way and just say it. My mother is absolutely beautiful. Peoples' jaws have actually dropped when they see her for the first time. Twice, actually, I've witnessed someone lay eyes on her and actually walk right into a wall because they were so distracted. They lose the ability to speak articulately, to think, and (in some drastic cases) to breathe. In middle school, there was this guy I really had a crush on, Jack Muller, and I invited him over once to work on a project. I thought he liked me too, but as soon as my mother walked in to check on our progress, it was like I didn't even exist. It was obvious by Jack's vacant expression and drooling lip that all he could think about was undressing my mother in his mind's eye. Needless to say, I was kind of disgusted.

My mother is beautiful in the sort of classical, Nordic way. I imagine she has the kind of face and figure that come to people's minds when they're trying to visualize characters like …oh, maybe Helen of Troy, Rosalie Hale, Narcissa Malfoy …really, anytime someone is described as being blonde, blue-eyed, and having peerless beauty, my mother is the only person who comes to mind. And see now, you may be struggling to visualize what she must look like. I'll tell you anyone that's come to your mind is not pretty enough. But keep trying, sunshine! Anyway…

The most annoying part of it is that my mom doesn't even seem to be aware of how good-looking she is. I don't understand how this can be. My mother is not stupid enough to be truly ignorant of her looks. She must feel awkward sometimes. Or, well, all the time, I guess. Our relationship is not exactly what you would call stellar, which I find unfortunate, because according to other people, she's can be really quite inspiring—even nice. For some reason, there's a wall between us, and it's like she refuses to get close to me. There are only a very select few people that she is totally at ease around, and I'm not one of them. Sometimes it feels like she's afraid of me, or she resents me, or …I don't know. The only remotely cutesy thing she ever did for me was give me a nickname when I was about six: Regal Regan, to help people know how to pronounce my name (like the word "regal," only with an "n" at the end instead of an "l." Everybody assumed it was supposed to be said like Reagan, which clashed a bit with my parents' politics).

I will say this much for my mother: at the outset, people mistakenly think she is shallow, because she's so gorgeous and always dresses so well. However, this could not be further from the truth: in comparison to other mothers I know, mine is fairly open-minded and tries not to be influenced by what other people say about her. Every time we go to church, she knows there are women who are gossiping about her behind her back, saying she's vain, she's cold, she's stuck-up. While I'm not exactly my mother's number one fan, I can attest that she is none of those things. She's one of those people who doesn't smile a lot, and when she has a neutral look on her face, she looks like she's upset about something (so… not really neutral, I guess). She's also not a very touchy-feely person, except when it comes to my dad. This all combined is what understandably gives people the impression that she is a snob, which she isn't. I could, though, empathize somewhat with people who think she's a bit cold, despite how often my father tells me that's wrong.

Ah, dad. My father Leonard is an American Indian, Navajo. When he was thirteen, he and his siblings were sent by his parents to go live with my great uncle in New York. There, my father went to high school with someone named Emily Wright, who would go on to attend college with my mother, and then go on to introduce my parents—and thus, history was made. I'm trying to think of some historical or even fictional couple whose romance I could compare my parents' to, and I'm having a hard time. Who are the first people you think of you when you try to picture two beings who are so in sync, so in love? Recent popular "literature" might put the names Edward and Bella into your head. I want to you to get that image out of your mind right now. It's an insult to my parents. Theirs is not a relationship based on how good one of them smells, or how attractive one of them is. They have had actual conversations that last for hours, they pursue each other's interests to better relate to one another, they are not (as I said before) shallow. When they catch each other's eye across a crowded room, there's more romance and adoration in that look than in any amount of physical lovemaking that another couple might go through. Oh, you know who I just thought of? Gomez and Morticia Addams! Is that really weird? That's so weird. But Gomez and Morticia were always flirting and being cutesy and happy together after having been married so long …it's the same way with my parents. What they have is real, not fantasy; it's pure, not horny; it's something I have to say I really want to have someday. I just hope that along the way, I don't turn into the aloof ice queen that my mother can sometimes be.

That might not even be her fault, really. Personally, I think she suffers from a lack of self-esteem, which is where my father comes in. She really needs him. We all do. I feel a lot closer to my dad than I ever have to my mom, and I have a few guesses as to why that is. First and foremost, there is the fact that my dad was around a lot more often in my childhood than my mom was. He worked from home, and was there for me while I was growing up. My mother was the one who commuted into the city every day, until I was about twelve and she suddenly quit. Maybe she felt guilty for having missed out on my childhood, because she seems a lot more motherly towards my little siblings than she is (or ever was) to me. My dad is more given to mollycoddling us than she is, which may be why I always gravitate towards him.

This may be unrelated, but there's also the fact that my ghostly pale mother and I don't look all that much alike. My coloring is much darker than hers. But that shouldn't make her feel weird; after all, she's obsessed with dad, and she dotes (?) on my little sister, whose skin is darker, like mine. Maybe I'm the one who feels weird about it. Sometimes it's little things, like never being able to borrow cover-up from my mom, which is something I feel like girls should be able to do.

(I will say this for my mom, though: one time she was with me and my sister Sierra at the grocery store, and in a rather irritable mood. Some creepy guy came up to us and started hitting on her, which was weird because you'd think he'd have had more tact than to hit on a woman in front of her daughters—seeing our dark skin, he asked my alabaster-toned mother where we had come from. I guess he thought she'd adopted us. In a dark voice, she said, "My womb," and then pushed past him to get some lettuce. I'd never laughed so hard in my life, but when I caught her eye afterwards, she could only manage to give me the tiniest of smiles.)

I'd love it if she could open up more to me. Sometimes I'll say or do something and my dad or aunt or uncle will say, "That's exactly what your mother would've said!" or "Did you see that? That was so Amy!" If they are to be believed, why don't my mom and I get on better?? Why's she so crazy, why doesn't she like me? Is ours just like any other mother-daughter relationship in America, and should I just stop worrying? Maybe I am stressing too much over this.

Just one more thing that drives me crazy about my mother: she cries a LOT. Usually it's not the intense, sobbing-so-hard-I-can't-breathe sort of crying, but it's like her tear ducts work overtime. This has branded her with the unfortunate nickname of "Weeping Willows," which really is quite appropriate. I don't know anyone else who can tear up so easily. It's embarrassing—but I do think it all stems back to that self-esteem issue I mentioned earlier. Geez, I hope I don't get so messed up someday. The smallest thing can set her off.

On the flipside, I could count on one hand the number of times I've seen my dad cry: once when his uncle died, once at my grandma (his mother-in-law)'s funeral, once when we made him watch Bridge to Terabithia, and once on the day I'm not even supposed to mention because he is racked with horror every time he thinks of it. But he's not going to read this, so I'll just write it anyway: September 11th, 2001. That day freaked me out not because I understood what the terrorist attacks could mean, but because I'd never seen my dad so scared.

Leonard Willows, age 40

Let me start by saying that I am honored to be able to speak to you about the woman I am so lucky to call my wife. There is no other person on this planet who I feel so closely connected to, around whom I can be one-hundred-percent myself one-hundred-percent of the time. Despite what you may have heard about her, she is one of the most compassionate, unselfish people that I know. Truly an unsung angel, and proof to me that God exists. Who else but a higher power could have invested in one single person so many inherently amazing qualities?

Ah…wait. You may be wondering what I mean, especially if you have already heard what Regan has to say. To me, it is one of the tragedies in my life that Regan and Amy don't get along better. It's not even that they quarrel (which would concern me less, because that seems to be a typical sort of mother-daughter relationship); they're usually polite to each other, but there is definitely something between them that keeps them from getting too close. There are several reasons for that, I'm sure, and one of them is that they are too much alike. Both of them are guarded, both of them are stubborn, both of them sell themselves short, both of them have a biting wit—although Amy rarely shows this side of herself to the kids.

Actually, there's a lot she doesn't show to the kids. The Amy I know is very, very different from the one they do. They don't know how much their mother loves to ride big horses. They don't know that she was once a hula-hooping champion and also someone fully capable of handling a gun. They don't know how much she loves to read old books, anything by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Frances Hodgson Burnett, or Edith Wharton. She actually reads Shakespeare for fun. They don't know that in addition to the piano, she can play the violin, and the harp. What the kids do seem fully aware of is that for some reason, their mother can't carry a tune vocally, she can't last more than a few days without tearing up at something, and she can't kick a ball as far as their old man. Our two youngest kids, Sean and Sierra, are also totally unaware that their mother once worked full-time. She quit when Sean was still a toddler, too young to remember what it was like to have me around the house all the time instead of his mother.

Amy is one of the smartest and most interesting people I have ever met in my life. She double-majored in English and journalism, she speaks Dutch fluently, and playing a game like Trivial Pursuit or Balderdash against her is impossible, because she seems to just know everything. (In Balderdash, a round can only be played if no one knows the definition of a certain word. Everyone is supposed to write their own answer, and then guess which is the correct one. Amy can never play this game because she has known the definition to each obscure word.) She attributes this to the fact that growing up, her parents—a literary critic and an economics professor—quizzed Amy, her sister, and three brothers at dinner every night, rather like the Kennedys. Just to keep them sharp. And it sure worked!

At times I am saddened because Amy and her brilliant mind are underestimated. Though she never complains, I know she feels judged for being a stay-at-home mom. She is content to be one now, but I can tell some people think very little of her, judging her and thinking she can't have ever done much with her life if all she does is look after her kids. The part that pains me the most is the knowledge that for most of the time, Amy's words of wisdom usually fall on deaf ears, because our children are too young to appreciate what she says. Our oldest daughter, Regan, is the only one that seems to be starting to realize how intelligent her mother is, how strong-minded.

In addition to that, Amy is a saint. A more charitable person I have never met. She believes wholly in doing quiet acts of service, and she usually does them anonymously so as not to draw attention to herself. Found your garden's been suddenly weeded? A bouquet on your porch on the anniversary of your father's death? A meal brought to your family when one or both of the parents was out of town or sick? Amy was there. She has more humility and charity in her heart than anyone else I know.

Unfortunately, Amy doesn't seem able to appreciate herself as much as I think she ought to. Some might say this is mere modesty, but I know (again, to an extent that not even our oldest daughter comprehends) that Amy struggles with her self-esteem and with sadness. Once every two months she meets with a therapist, but this is something else she keeps hidden from the kids. Though she's never expressly told me why she hasn't told them, she doesn't need to. Much as I have tried to assure her that there is no shame in seeing a therapist, she can't bring herself to admit it to our children. For this, I have to blame movies and television shows that regularly portray people seeking therapy or psychiatrists as complete nutjobs, losers, total wrecks—their characters exist only for the viewer's amusement, to make fun of them. Images like that only help to hurt people like my wife, making her feel ashamed and unbalanced, and it always pains me to see her embarrassed like that.

Some might think my wife has no reason to have a lack of self-esteem, because anyone so breath-takingly beautiful has no right to have such a low self-image. Amy's beauty is not something I like to harp on, but it has to be discussed because it makes up such a big part of who she is and how others treat her. People very mistakenly take one look at her—at her statuesque figure (an inch taller than me, and forget it if she wears heels), her wavy blonde hair, and her bright white teeth—and they think, trophy wife. I know this because of the way co-workers have broached the subject of our marriage after they've met Amy, like they think she's some dopey blonde I somehow duped into marrying me. This is a great insult to her; it underestimates her intelligence, her personality, her ambitions in life. Unless someone really gets to know her (which can be difficult, as she is the kind of person who needs to be approached, not the type to go out and approach others), they write her off as vain and cold. Their loss.

I am ashamed to admit that I too severely misjudged Amy at first. This is because I had only glimpsed her from afar, and a few moments later, when I was close enough to see her eyes, my judgment rescinded. Her eyes were not cold, distant, or supercilious as I had expected them to be. In the brief moment that she chose to hold my gaze—really hold it, now that she knew she had it—she tacitly conveyed to me how much it hurt her that people made up their minds about her without knowing her. Her yearning for friendship, companionship, acceptance, along with her willingness to overlook my having judged her in the first place: this was all wrapped into one, brief glance. She wasn't looking for pity, she didn't need attention, she just wanted a chance. I think one of the reasons she let herself get close to me was because I gave her that chance.

Even her voice surprised me. It was not hard and sure as I had presumed it would be. It was nervous, a little shaky, brimming with a clear lack of confidence, higher pitched than she looks. But once you get her speaking on a subject she feels passionately about, it's like you forget where you are. You've been transported right into what she is saying to you. Unfortunately, few people get the opportunity to meet that side of her. She is ostracized by her beauty and her introversion, written off as a pretentious snob.

These severe misjudgments only further feed Amy's esteem issues, her timidity, and her struggle with depression. I have been told repeatedly by various members of her family that they have never seen her more happy than when she is with me, for which I am honored and grateful. But I do think they must exaggerate. I've witnessed her experience great moments of happiness; I've seen the light of taking pleasure in life in her eyes. Amy's not had an easy time of it, that's certain, and she didn't come by this depression honestly. What I mean by that is that it's not a genetic condition in her case… rather, she has been plagued by, as she sometimes jokes, "a series of unfortunate events" all throughout her life.

Maybe I ought to just stand back and let her tell you about it.