MOTHER'S DAY

My mother is 94, lives alone, has blond hair and tends to her garden. Surrounded by a vigilant family, she passes her days contentedly in her cottage in a gated community. She always speaks fondly on my father who embarked on the eternal journey ten years ago. This is a pithy story of her colorful path through existence:

"Big sister shopping for little brother?"

No compliment pleased my mother more. She is only 18 years older than I. I would accompany her shopping when I was a child. She was in her early twenties. At her worst she was attractive. At her best she was beautiful.

She never stepped out of the house unless she was immaculately groomed and wearing the latest fashion within the constraints of her budget. Her parents were both teachers and raised her middle class with all the pretensions and aspirations of the Boston Irish.

She and my father struggled economically raising a large family. Dad entered the insurance business and slowly ascended the corporate ladder. My mother stayed home. Including my father, none of us left the house in nothing less that our Sunday best.

She didn't go to mass for years. She lacked the proper attire in her opinion, but she sent Dad and the family to church dressed as if every Sunday were Easter Sunday. She combed the second-hand stores for clothes and furniture. We never lacked for anything.

She was a big sports fan. Her dad spent a brief spell in the minor leagues. During the long, hot, California summers in the San Joaquin Valley, she and I would sit in her room, deal gin rummy and listen to Vin Scully and the Dodgers.

My dad was working a second job, sometimes a third. His was an interminable day. I was my mother's constant companion. She taught me the importance of manners. If I didn't open her door or pull out her chair, she would stand with a grim stare until I recognized the error of my uncouth ways.

She had one commandment that she uttered with the regularity of our nightly prayers and with the finality of the Last Judgment: "Nothing that goes on inside this house goes outside these walls."

My parents had few friends during my childhood. Acquaintances were inconveniences. Raising a large family required all their energies. They didn't have time to socialize. There was no extra money for those extravagances.

We found it exotic when my father would bring home the white boxes of Chinese food for the two of them. They would dine with the pleasure of a king and queen. Those meals were their special moments together.

My mother believed that an education would transform her children. We attended parochial schools through eighth grade, but tuition, no matter the number of bingos they worked during the weekends, was too expensive for high school. We embarked on the more liberal experiences of public schools.

Undeterred, mother focused on the importance of a college education. She would grant us our freedom to pursue anything in life as long as we brought her a college diploma. All her children met her requisites and have reaped the rewards of her wisdom.

She led by example. My father provided the chorus in my mother's one-act play. He repeated for our benefit that teaching history was his idea of the perfect life. My mother started taking classes at Modesto Junior College. That was her social life. She took a decade finishing her basics.

She transferred to Stanislaus State and in the same piecemeal fashion completed her B.A. and gained her teaching certificate. She taught at the same parochial school that had graduated her eight children. In her opinion amplified by the opinion of her colleagues and repeated on many occasions, she was not only the best teacher at St. Stanislaus Catholic School, she was the best teacher in the entire state.

Mother's critics, mostly aunts and uncles who disputed her age, would grumble about her vanity, but they never convinced us that she suffered from anything worse than a healthy pride.

I appreciate her as a realist with a self-confidence that empowers her to conquer any challenge. The last time I spoke with her it was classic mother.

"I went to the hospital for tests," she told me over the phone as she described her clothes in minute detail. "The nurses couldn't believe my age."

And, of course, there is this iconic pronouncement: "If you've heard that I've died, it's not because I wanted to!"

To my mother and all mothers: Happy Mother's Day!