Like most everyone else, my mother had imaginary friends when she was little.

Hers were super heroes and with them she could fly. As she grew older, her dreams changed and grew with her.

She dropped our of school when she knew, that for her, it was time.

She met my Dad and decided right away that she was going to marry him (she had to spend the next two years convincing him, though).

Then it was babies and motherhood in a foreign country, away from her own family.

When we moved back to Canada, she wanted to learn aerobics (remember 80s aerobics?) and before long she was teaching aerobics.

As we got older she decided to learn how to decorate cakes, so she took classes and started an at home cake decorating business, which led to a job in a bakery, which led to managing a bakery and then, eventually, the whole grocery store.

Five days before her 50th birthday, my mother jumped out of an airplane.

In the video footage we watched later,  you can hear her screaming, "I'm flying!" Then, a bit later, while they glided down on an open chute, you can hear her say again, quieter, with the wonder of a child realizing her dreams. "I'm flying."

I never really know where my mom's dreams will take her next, but I know she has always inspired us to have our own, and more than that, she has supported us, and believed in us when we ran the fairy dust roads of our own dreams.

She has shown us, that while it may take hard work and leap of faith, dreams can come true.