We’ve been tough on Sally Quinn here at GetReligion, and there’s no need to revisit those disputes today. Instead, I want to enjoy a tribute to Quinn by her only son as he describes what it’s like to live with Velo-Cardio-Facial Syndrome.

In the March 30 edition of Newsweek, Quinn Bradlee writes of his love for both his parents, but also of his desire to be less dependent on them. He even uses, well, religious imagery to describe his mother’s fierce commitment to him:

… pretty soon after I was born, my doctor detected a heart murmur, and when I was about three months old, I had to have open-heart surgery. I think this was a pretty crappy time for my parents. They thought I might die, and I could have died. My mom says the night before my heart operation was one of the worst nights of her life. She wasn’t allowed to nurse me. She could barely even hold me. When they took me into the operating room the next day, she basically fainted.

… She’s a very powerful woman. She’s like a bulldog, or a lioness. You don’t want to mess with her. She has controlled a lot of my life. Sometimes I’m angry about that, because I feel I’m in the passenger seat of the car and I have to ride wherever the driver wants me to go. Sometimes I feel as if I have no freedom.

But there is a flip side to everything. And there is truth in everything that we say. I couldn’t have lived without my mom. She’s saved my ass a million times. She has been like an archangel to me. She had the wings that I didn’t. And she’s basically carried me everywhere I’ve been.

Ms. Quinn does not need to hear this from me, but I am glad to write it anyway: Well done.