Happy Mothers Day to all ROFTERS!

And to you, too!

Honor your mother, while you can. If you don't, you're a blue-ribbon jerk. Just in case no one told you before, is all.

Around the way there lived an old widow who had been abandoned by her grown children. I had no direct contact with her, but her immediate neighbors told me that they were getting together to do some upkeep on her house. The yard was overgrown, the ceilings were falling down, and it was just a big sad mess. No one I spoke with knew what her children had against her, but the way they neglected her was just unnatural. I cut her grass one day, though I never saw her, and other people did some other work around the house. But soon after that she passed away. I later learned that, during her funeral, the children came to the house and cleaned it out, and then left. How contemptible. There ought to be a commandment about that--and there is.

No matter how rough a ride someone's childhood may have been, everyone is here thanks to someone else. Every child eventually reaches the point where they look back on the job their parents' did in raising them, and renders a verdict. Parents can only hope they will be just, and/or merciful. So, while I hope your relationship with your mother is all carnations and sunshine, don't forget what the commandment says. Not "love", not "respect", not "tolerate", not "relate to"; but "honor". You can look it up.