The expression "A day late and a dollar short" reverberates

in the innermost recesses of my mind.

It applies to the activities of many folks, but it doesn't apply to me and/or the subject of this piece.

The subject is Mama, and though her annual day was celebrated nationally last Sunday, "mumma" remains with me in my "little grey cells" with a constancy that is both genuine and loving.

She had a knack (an ingenuous device, indeed) of making everyone feeling they were her "special person." That's a quality that in this era of "instancy" is unknownmainly because almost everybody nowadays is totally absorbed in tube-watching, e-mailing and cell-phoning.

They simply don't have time to attend to the human aspect that involves person-to-person relationships.

My mother, a graduate registered nurse, spent all her professional career tending the needs of her patients.

When she married, and took on the responsibilities of family matters, she turned her healing, comforting and solicitation toward her household members; she focused all her energies toward her husband and the five children she reared.

How she managed, single-handedly, to cook seven breakfasts and seven dinners every blessed day, pack five lunches for her five school children on weekdays and create seven meals six times on weekends, will forever remain a mystery.

But, as they say in today's vernacular, "That ain't all folksthey's more."

In addition to her capabilities as outlined above, Mama also made the beds, swept, mopped, did the hand-laundering and kept the house spick-and-span for the entire brood.

With all entailed in her self-inflicted responsibilities, she was possessed of a hearty exuberance, a joviality that defies explanation.

She knew no enemy, nor any individual that was not captivated by her outgoing personality.

To say I loved Mama with unbounded fervor would be an understatement

in any vernacular.