A mother, though human, is that wonderful creature whose love knows no bounds, never wavering, never waning. She is, perhaps, the rarest of all God’s creatures, for she is the truest.

From the very first day she becomes a mother, her’s is a strange destiny. No eight hour day, no five day week, no employee benefits, no paid vacations. Her’s is a seven-day-a-week, twenty-four hour-a-day job crowded full of chores and crises. Her nerves seem made of steel and her fortitude near superhuman.

She is a specialist and jack-of-all-trades, a baby-sitter and laundress, a nurse and cook, housekeeper and maid, chauffeur, counselor, and countless other things. She is endowed with the gift of knowing; when to laugh and when to cry, when to be firm and when to be tender.

A mother copes with all kinds of situations; the first day of school, the first date and the first broken heart. Nights of worry over late dates, auto accidents and teenage escapades.

But after all is said and done, a mother is a lonely woman when her children are grown up and gone, when her life is changed and somehow sad, though finally free. She is then a woman wondering about adult children; where they are, what they are doing, and telling herself they still love her and need her as they used to, while missing the days when the patter of little feet echoed through the house.