Mother's Day
	As Mother's Day approaches it makes me remember a number of things that happened in my childhood, but two in particular. When the eight of us would gather around the dining room table every evening at six o'clock for supper, it was always to enjoy a nice meal my mother had prepared. I really can't remember us ever going out to a restaurant. You wouldn't believe what the prices were to eat at a restaurant back then. If you knew, you'd think we would've eaten out all the time. It was still too expensive for us, but we kids didn't know the difference. We were just as happy as we could be. The whole family's favorite meal was my mother's fried chicken. Everybody had their favorite piece so there was never any question about who got what. My mother loved, and always made sure she got, the neck and the back. I, as pre-teenagers can be sometimes, was almost put off by the fact that anyone would actually prefer these uninspired, lacking pieces of chicken. "Well, that's what I like." she always said. Many years later all six of us children were grown and had moved to our own places. I was the youngest so I was the last to leave. I'd stop by about once or twice a week just to visit and say hello. One night I came in and Mother and Daddy were sitting at the dining room table having supper. Fried chicken. There on Mother's plate was a nice, big, juicy fried chicken breast. I said "I thought you liked the back or the..." And it was like a lightbulb turned on over my head. She always gave us the good pieces. My dad looked at me and smiled as if to say, well, it took you long enough to figure out. Another story that comes to mind, not just at Mother's Day but from time to time over the years, took place when I was in about the fifth grade. I was in school one day, Thomas Edison Elementary School. It was lunchtime and after lunch a lot of the kids were running around outside, playing. Mrs. Cone, the principal, was standing under the arcade that went between the main building and the lunchroom. As I was running past her on my way to the playground, she reached out and held me back by my shoulder. She said, "I want to tell you something." I was a little scared. "I've been a principal here for thirty years and I've seen hundreds of mothers and children come through this school. Your mother is the only one I've ever seen that has six children and treats every one of them like an only child." I said, "Thanks!" and took off for the play ground. The meaning of what she had said went right over my head. I knew it was nice but it didn't really mean a lot to me...then. Let me say this, that I know there are thousands of mothers out there that are just as loving and caring for their children as ours was with us. I think that Mrs. Cone knew, because of my age, that the compliment she gave me hadn't really registered. But I'm sure she knew that in years to come I would remember that day and exactly what she had said and that I would know what a tremendous compliment it was. And she was right. Lynn Ash