For My Mother on Mother's Day

Each year we are faced with the daunting challenge to attempt to express our appreciation, love, and respect for the person we all call, "mom, mommy, momma, ma, mother, momma T, m-squeeze, or whatever term of endearment we place on that person who fought nausea, fatigue, incessant food cravings of pickles and vanilla ice cream, or the occasional fetal roundhouse kick to the ribs just to bring us into this world. At 7 lbs. 11 oz., at 11:06 p.m. my mother introduced me to the delivery room at Castle hospital.
I said earlier that we are faced with a daunting challenge.......a challenge that only calls once a year for us to take a day and show our mothers how much we appreciate them. Motherhood is a fulltime job that never ends. My mother was up at six each morning waking me and my brothers up for school. Breakfast was definitely an interesting meal many times throughout my life. Sometimes we walked out to the usual bowls of cereal and milk. Other times, mom would throw together a breakfast pizza with whatever ingredients were around the house. No matter what she put on that breakfast, it always tasted awesome! She would drive us to school and pick us up everday. She drove us to basketball practices and games and was our biggest and loudest fan in the stands. I can still hear her, "WOOHOO" in that high-pitched yell echo through the gymnasium above the roar of the crowds. I remember her baked goods for the team or just for the family at home. Many times she baked for other families or for her visiting teaching families that she would visit. Oh how I wished I was one of those families on the receiving end of those desserts. Mom can bake a pan of flour and water and make it look and taste like something out of a magazine.
I also know the things my mother has done that are unspoken or unrecognized, usually because she doesn't say anything to bring attention to herself. My mother like many mothers out there share a common thread......compassion. I know that as a young boy we did not have a lot of money. I know my mother would not eat for days so that my brother and I could have food to eat until something panned out or money came in again. Another time my mother, seeing a car coming at them at 65 mph while turning left quickly turned the car to the right not to avoid getting hit, but so that the oncoming car would hit her side door and not my brother's door. My mother has endured these last few years of my father battling cancer, all the while caring for herself, the family, extended family, working fulltime and never asking for aide, not just for the physical caring for herself and my father, but also aide in shouldering these heavy responsibilities that have worn on her emotional, physical, and mental well-being. My mother is the unsung hero whose shoes I cannot fill and whose love I cannot equal.
So, on this one day a year, we try to say, "thank you" to our mothers for a lifetime of sacrifice and pro bono work done so that we may grow up to be intelligent, caring, law-abiding citizens. I say thank you to my mother and want to let her know this........your sacrifices have not gone unnoticed and your willingness to be a mom has not gone unappreciated. So, to my mother on this one day a year, from your oldest son, thank you for being you and being a part of my life.