- The story of The Mother, from her traumatic 21st birthday to a number of close calls with meeting Ted to the night before Barney and Robin's wedding.
- In the continuing story Ted is telling his children in 2030 of how he met their mother, he flips the story to tell them of what their mother was doing while Ted was hanging out with Marshall, Lily, Robin and Barney over those same years. This story starts on the very same day he started his own story, the day that Marshall and Lily got engaged, and the day he met Robin. This day was their mother's twenty-first birthday, the day her then boyfriend Max, who was the love of her life and the one and only person she thought she would ever love, died. His death affected how she approached her dating life over much of the intervening time. Ted also tells them of the many close calls the two of them had in meeting, including when she, as an economics student who wanted to end world poverty, was in the classroom he thought was his classroom for his very first day as an architecture professor, and how she became roommates with Cindy, a woman who he ended up dating. The story also tells of how she ended up in Farhampton at the same time as Robin and Barney's wedding and how she ended up in the room next to his at the inn, when he first heard her voice, a situation that would be a memorable one for him for the rest of his life.—Huggo
- At MacLaren's Pub in September 2005, a woman passes by Barney and Ted as they get ready for another round of "Have you met Ted?" It turns out that the woman, Kelly (Ahna O'Reilly), went to the wrong MacLaren's Pub and takes a cab to another MacLaren's on the East Side to join The Mother (her roommate) on her 21st birthday. The Mother awaits the arrival of her boyfriend Max only to receive a call informing her of his death. After the funeral service, she returns to the apartment to open Max's last gift to her-a ukulele.
At St Patrick's Day three years later, Kelly encourages The Mother to go out and date again, bringing her to the same bar where Ted and Barney are celebrating. The two women run into Mitch (Adam Paul), her old orchestra instructor who was then a music teacher at a Bronx public school. Inspired by his work, The Mother offers Mitch her cello and they head back to her apartment to get it. However, The Mother prepares the cello only to see Mitch pull off The Naked Man. She is disgusted at his move, but remembers her yellow umbrella at the bar and goes out to get it, leaving behind Kelly (who earlier rebuffed Barney at the bar) to have sex with Mitch. She learns that a "super inconsiderate person" (Ted) took the umbrella. The Mother expresses her desire to end poverty by taking up economics in college.
In the fall of 2009, The Mother sits her first session in Econ 305 and meets Cindy (Rachel Bilson), whom she offers to move in with her as her roommate. The Mother says that she believes in a single soul mate in life and that she already found hers and already lost him. They see Ted enter the room (after which the Mother laughs at his "shellfish" joke), but The Mother thinks she's in the wrong room when he announces the subject and runs off. She heads back to the room after seeing Ted scramble to his actual classroom. A few months later, she gets her umbrella back when Ted visits Cindy at her apartment. Cindy tells her that she broke up with the "architecture professor" because the man picked out The Mother's items and saw that they were more compatible; in the ensuing conversation, Cindy spontaneously kisses the Mother, which makes Cindy realize her homosexuality. In turn, the Mother decides to start dating again, having not been kissed in a long time.
Some time later, a man named Darren approaches The Mother and is welcomed into her band-however, Darren gradually takes it over and makes The Mother carry band equipment. The Mother meets Louis (Lou Ferrigno Jr.) and he helps her with the equipment, but later at MacLaren's Pub (which Louis thought was named "Puzzles"), she tells him she's not yet ready to date because of her loss with Max. Louis asks her to give him a call if she changes her mind and she leaves just before Ted appears to Lily and Barney in a green dress. They begin dating not long after, but they are not really a perfect match (for example, Louis is not amused when the Mother has her English muffin sing show tunes). The Mother's band is eventually booked for Barney and Robin's wedding; she stays at Louis's summer cottage not far from the Farhampton Inn.
In a flash-forward to the eve of the wedding, The Mother discovers Darren's ad for a replacement bass player and heads down to the Inn to confront him, eventually picking up Marshall and Marvin along the way. After seeing Darren get his comeuppance, she returns to Louis's house, where he proposes to her, but she goes outside to think about it. She begins talking to Max and asks his permission to move on with her life. Interpreting a gust of wind as Max's answer, The Mother bids him one last goodbye and declines Louis's proposal, later checking in at Farhampton Inn. The Inn had one room available as the mother of the bride never checked in. On her room's balcony, she plays the ukulele and sings "La Vie en Rose". Ted hears her next door (with Future Ted saying that it was the first and most favorite time he heard his future wife sing this song) and gets back inside to tell Barney about it, only to find out he has disappeared.
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