I’m lucky that my real-life Mom has both a great sense of humor about herself and an amazing ability to slip into complete denial if the subject matter gets a little too close to home.

The quote balances gratitude with gentle irony: Guisewite feels “lucky” because her mother can enjoy being the subject of humor, yet also has a psychological escape hatch—denial—when the humor threatens to become too intimate. It highlights a common family negotiation around storytelling: loved ones may tolerate caricature and exaggeration as long as it stays safely in the realm of comedy, but they may retreat when it approaches emotional truth. More broadly, it suggests that humor can be both a bridge (shared laughter) and a boundary (a way to avoid painful recognition), especially in parent–child relationships.