most of the time when i look at her , i ca n't help but see my mom , not because the two of them look anything alike , outside of being tall and gorgeous , but because , as my mom 's best friend for like the last hundred years , billy has a million memories like this one about stanford , funny stories and sad ones , times when mom got a bad haircut or when she lit the kitchen on fire trying to make bananas flambe or when they were nurses in world war i together and mom saved a man 's life with nothing but a bobby pin and a rubber band .