Even though us kids were blessed with two loving parents, it was Mom who ended up in the trenches with us for most of the day to day activities.  One of my fondest memories of Mom, was also what defined her to me as a mother.

Since me and my brothers Mike and Danny were so close in age, we all made our first communion at the same time. This was in the late 1950's, so finding three white suits on the cheap was going to be a problem. In most families there was a gap between children by a couple years, so you could hand these these things down to the next in line, but Dad liked to do things a little different.

Mom was able to borrow Mike's outfit from a friend, but me and Danny, being so petite, she decided to buy one of those sewing patterns from Sears and Roebuck and create those "little white suits" herself. She worked for weeks and did a masterful job. We wore them proudly, and as the years went by, I would tell this story but joked that she also made our "white bucks". ( It probably wasn't funny then either.)

But showing what a mother truly is, and the love they have for their children showed up clearly when our brother Mike was a Marine in Viet Nam. She and our Dad lived a nightmare everyday he was over there, but I was lucky to be home when she got the call from Great Lakes Naval Base that he was wounded but safe back home. What I witnessed was pure love and I'll never forget that. Thanks Mom