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"I'll always love my Mama. She's my favorite girl. I'll always love my Mama. She brought me in this world. You only get one ... You only get one ... "

The Intruders

R&B group

Happy Mother's Day to all mothers ... to those who are birth mothers ... those who are mothers of the adopted ... those who are surrogate mothers ... those who are foster mothers ... and especially to all grandmothers who have had to step up to the plate and raise their children's children.

This Mother's Day finds my Mama having just turned 80 years old — on April 24. My mother, like the mothers of old, was like a tree planted by the rivers. She was a survivor, like the banyan tree. A banyan tree does whatever it has to do to survive. When water is scarce, the banyan tree sends out shoots from its branches and they burrow down into the ground to find a water source. Its main roots descend, deep underground, in search of more water and to anchor the tree to withstand coming storms.

Like that banyan tree, Mama had to adapt and adjust as she passed through the portals of time. Deep in the heart of red-clay Georgia, Mama picked cotton with her brothers and sisters. When the storms of separation and divorce attempted to blow her off course, she stayed the course. When Mama and my birth daddy went their separate ways, Grandma Willie and Grandpa Ralph became my parents.

But when the time was right, Mama Minnie came back to get me at 6 years old. I remember vividly when Grandma Willie gave me back to my Mama and a new beginning in Miami, Fla. That meant that Mama was married to the most wonderful man I ever met, my stepfather, C.E. Lowery. We also had our own home and a new beginning.

Mother was the queen of our house and my stepdad was the king. Never one to sit on her laurels, Mama worked as a domestic. She cleaned wealthy white people's homes and often she was given clothing and shoes to bring home. Mama told us how the lady of the house would sometimes leave money (a $10 or $20 bill) lying around to see if she would steal. Mama would politely tell the house lady where her money was.

Mama believed in education. She only went to the 10th grade. I had to go to school. Truancy wasn't in my vocabulary. When I made an "F" in conduct (my only "F"), Mama went out to the school and told the principal he had her permission to whip my aspirin tablet.

Mama has survived to see many of her closest relatives, friends and her best friend, my daddy, pass on. She has felt the pain of my sister getting hit by a truck at a young age. She has been the matriarch of our whole family. She has raised a host of children. She has survived the Liberty City riots. She lived through being robbed by knifepoint as a cashier at Dad's gas station. She prayed and nursed my sister back to health after she was stricken with breast cancer. She stayed on her post as an usher for St. Paul A.M.E. Church for decades.

I'll always love my Mama. She's my favorite girl. Mama sent up a lot of prayers for me. It was Mama's prayers which kept me when my birth father died. Mama prayed when my roommate and I got kicked out of our apartment in Buffalo, N.Y., for not having the rent money on time. It was Mama who said, "Boy, you get all of your stuff and come home."

A mother's love knows no bounds. Perhaps the greatest motivating Mama ever did for me was when she felt she had prayed enough over her knucklehead son. She would look me in the eye and say, "I done turned you over!" That meant she loved me but she had put me in the hands of God to get myself straightened out.

So I say "Happy Mother's Day" once more to all the mothers out there.

Elmon W. Prier is a veteran educator and minister. His e-mail address is eprier@cinci.rr.com.

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