A tribute to Mom

Dear Mom:

So no publisher has asked for your life story.

Heck, you never even had a newspaper story written about you.

You weren't recognized at a City Council meeting or given a plaque by the PTA.

Other than generous helpings of hugs that left Twinkie filling spackled across your back, even the youth soccer team didn't do much by way of tribute.

So what? You've got the world's greatest fan club honoring you today. It's the greatest fan club because you created it (with a little help from Dad). And because you richly deserve it.

Doing things right in consistent but unspectacular fashion just doesn't seem to garner much attention. Doing things wrong does. The mothers who abandon their kids or starve them or hurt them in some other way? They get headlines. Their names are on the lips of people in the audience at City Council meetings and in church pews.

They're vilified, but as you understand, Mom, it's not entirely their fault. Chances are they didn't benefit from having a good mother. We look up to you, Mom, because yours will be the voice of reason, the quiet insistence upon compassion when the rest of us are already mounted on our high horses and ready to charge in all our glorious fury. Your sad but kind words will stop us in our tracks, and as they have so many times over the years, help us better confront society's problems constructively.

We don't know the question, Mom, but you've taught us that the answer is always the same: Love. You've taught us that by living it every day. And we know you'll continue teaching us, because you always remember and sometimes we forget.

Even though most of us kids have surpassed you in height and physical prowess, we still look up to you, Mom. Without headlines or fanfare, you make sense of a chaotic world, and we're all the better for it.