My mom and I shared a love of Jon Stewart. She always taped his shows and watched them when she could, occasionally mentioning in a phone conversation one of his monologues. “It was so funny!” I can hear her say. Politics wasn’t exactly her thing, the way it is for many people in my neck of the woods. I never heard her get into a political debate over a hot issue or attend a rally (she left that to me and my dad). But she kept up with the news and had her moments of passion, which often cracked me up. “Did you hear his speech last night?” she would say. “What an ass!” Mostly when we talked politics, though, it was the human interest stuff – his hair, her wardrobe, his stupid catch phrases, all the crazy pomp and circumstance, what it all must really be like behind the scenes. Recently, I was lucky enough to have lunch at the White House and get a quick tour of the Executive Offices. A close friend of mine is a top official, an advisor to Biden. She invited me to dine in the Mess in the West Wing, across from the Situation Room. I missed my mom so much throughout the whole exciting afternoon, and not just because she would have eaten it all up. She was always the most fun to talk to when I did stuff like this, asking me about every detail and cracking jokes and being amazed in that way moms are (“you drew that all by yourself? Wow!”). It’s also as if many of the thoughts I had, things I said and did, my mom would have thought and said and did, too. She would have slipped a few sugar packets into her purse because they had the presidential seal on them, as I did. She would have ordered the “Chocolate Freedom” for dessert because how could you not? She would have asked a ton of questions – what did I wear? What did I order? Whom did I see? She would have said how nice it was of my friend to invite me and she would have been impressed with her anew and asked if the next time they got together my friend could please have a tag sticking out or something in her teeth just to keep things real. She would have brought the conversation to a close with a gentle “wow.” “I know, right?” I might have said. The rest of the conversation might have gone like this: “You think Jon Stewart ever had lunch at the White House?” “Dunno.” “Maybe I’ll send him some of the sugar packets with a nice note.” “Good idea.” “All right, I have to head back to work. I’ll call you later.” “Okay. Love you. Thanks for calling.” “I love you, too, mom. Thanks for listening.”