I always wear bright red nail polish (now it’s gel) on the ring finger of my left hand. When I’m asked why, I often say: “It means I killed a person for asking personal questions.” But the real reason is simple: it’s for my mom. When I was in high school I had been doing mostly juggling, but a little bit of magic too, for several years. My mom told me I should keep my nails clean, well-manicured, and not bitten, because I was asking people to look at my hands. In order to mock her, I grabbed her nail polish and painted my nail (I already had hair hanging past my shoulders and eye make-up, so the nail wasn’t a stretch). She rolled her eyes. I kept doing it as a way to show her she shouldn’t tell me what to do (it didn’t work).

That painted nail, which began as a way of mocking my mother, eventually became a secret code, and finally a tribute. When I would go on Letterman, if I brushed my thumb against my left ring finger my mom, watching at home, knew I was thinking of her on that joke. And when she died on the first day of 2000 (she made it for that first digit change), I knew the nail was going to stay. It’s not accurate to write that I wear my mom’s nail polish and my dad’s ring to remember them. That’s not the problem. The problem is trying not to think about them every second of every day. So, with those things focusing my memory, maybe I can get along in life. It’s like Mother’s Day.

I think my daughter, who is about to turn 11, started telling her friends that I wear the nail polish for her, my daughter, my little Mox. I think my mom would approve of all the little distortions that we use to make poetry out of our lives without her.

Yeah, it’s a jive-ass holiday, but think about your mom and buy her something. Maybe a Withings product, but at least something goddamn it.