I'm sure that Mother's Day brought it on – the musing on my mother's life that I've done today.

She was the second-to-youngest of seven children - the fifth daughter - born to a prosperous family in the South right before the Great Depression. My aunts all agree that she was the indulged child; the favorite of my grandfather, a curmudgeonly man, if the stories are to be believed. I never met him; he died before I was born, but I've read his letters to his wife, written when they were newly married. He may have been a crotchety old man before he died, but his letters are filled with love for his family. That must have been where my mother learned it.

She attended college, but dropped out after a year, and married. Of course, in her time, many women only went to college to find a husband. I don't know if that's why she went, but I rather doubt it. She has an incredibly quick intellect, and to this day can see through most of my information dodges and prevarications. I didn't find out until I was long grown and gone from home that the reason she quit school and married was because she was pregnant with my oldest sister. I can't judge her for this, even though I'm sure she was judged, and judged harshly at the time. I managed to wait until after I graduated college to get pregnant, but I did much the same thing.

She divorced her first husband, Danny, when my oldest sister was only a year or so old, and moved back home. My grandmother was old-fashioned Southern Baptist, and I'm sure she was hard on my mother. Perhaps her father softened her way. I hope so.

Mom still smiles when she tells the story of how my father asked her to marry him. “Do you think I would make a good father for Dana?” he asked one night, after they'd been dating awhile. She thought he would be, and her judgment was sound. He was a wonderful father to all of us that eventually came along, even the one that wasn't biologically his. She knew no other father but him.

My mother never held a job that gave her a paycheck, but she toiled relentlessly and endlessly at home. To this day I am nervous if she ever visits my home – I could never live up to her standards of housekeeping, child-rearing, cooking. She never says a word; the critic is me. I can cook chicken and dumplings, but they are never quite as good as hers. At least, my children don't fight over the last bit in the bowl the way my brothers and I fought over hers.

Did she feel the lack as she sent each of us off to college in our turn? If she did, she never said. She helped us pack, washed our clothes on the weekend, and sent us money when it was needed, without complaint. It's remarkable, really...all five of us went to college, and four of the five graduated. Two of us have gone on to advanced degrees.

There's a story she tells about my father buying an airplane with the money from their savings account. I'm sure it happened before I was born, or when I was very small, because I don't remember anything about it, but then I wouldn't. I never saw my parents say a cross word to each other. Mom said she had saved up some money, painstakingly, five or six dollars a week. It was hard, I'm sure...so many kids to feed and clothe is never cheap. My father found a good deal on an airplane, so he raided the savings account, and bought it. I think it's the only time she ever threatened to leave him, but he sold the airplane and returned the money to the account to get back into her good graces. He realized what a treasure he had.

The litany of things she has dealt with and endured is probably no worse or no better than any other good mother, but I wonder if I could have dealt with those things with the grace she had, the dignity. My oldest sister also became pregnant in college, dropped out, got married, and then divorced and moved back home with my niece, who is only five years younger than I am.

We often had extra kids around the table, since she couldn't say “no” to the friend of my brother's whose parents had kicked him out, the friend visiting from the other coast, or the people my father brought home, but she never complained, just set an extra place at the table.

My oldest brother got in some trouble with the law at seventeen, joined the Navy, and then got caught selling pot. He spent a year in jail, but she drove six hours at least once a month to see him. When he got out, she saw to it that he enrolled in college, and encouraged, pushed, cajoled, whatever it took...he now has his own business, his own airplane, a family of his own.

One sister married a Mormon, converted, and then proceeded to have a child almost every year. Her total stands at fourteen children. My mother sends them all birthday checks, graduation gifts, even though she sometimes can't remember all their names.

My younger brother also ran afoul of the law, and ended up serving six years in prison, all the way across the country. She paid for his attorney, flew out to visit him, helped him furnish an apartment upon his release. He also owns his own business, and is successful.

My father died back in 1985. I was always a daddy's girl; never saw who the real strength, the real backbone of our family is until then. I saw her cry once. She told me later that she knew if she cried, that I would start, and would be inconsolable, so she held on...for me.

I realize how lucky I am to still have my mother with me. I can't imagine this family without her. She will be 81 this year, and I know our time together is drawing to a close, but not anytime soon, I hope.

I dream of my father every once in awhile. Will I dream of her, too?