Mother's Day 2025. Gotta Love It

  As I begin this week’s installment, it is Mother’s Day 2025. I would be remiss not to talk about the mothers behind all of us. 

We all have formed our own very personal relationships with the women who brought us into this world. For the imprint they have left upon us is indelible. 

I think of my mother, who left this world when I was just 26 years old. I was exceptionally close to her, as she was the one who spent the most time with me. For my first 10+ years, my mother was a stay-at-home mother while my father built his dental practice with long days and nights. 

She cooked. She cleaned. Picked out my clothes. As a teacher who wasn’t actively working in a school, she taught me and helped aplenty with my homework. 

My mother took care of me, and in 1959, my sister entered this world and became my very own playmate. Which gave her double the stress, as I was the easy child. 

There was very little she didn’t do for me or at least guide me. Before she resumed driving, we traveled together by bus. I remember countless trips to the Menlo Park Mall to buy clothes—which I endured, not too well. 

We traveled by car a lot when I was growing up. By age 15 I had been cross country 4 times and to Las Vegas an equal number. My mother was quite the trouper—she made sure we were ready to go and she seemingly enjoyed all the sights of this great country. 

My mother was hardly an athlete. We had an in ground backyard pool, and for a girl from Coney Island, she could barely do the doggie paddle. 

Yet she encouraged me when I began to play competitive baseball. My mother was a fixture in the stands, and when I was very young and overmatched by the older kids, she was there to provide solace. That continued at Franklin and Marshall College, when my parents would schlep to Lancaster for home games during my one full season of playing in 1970. 

She was truly happy when I had success. And sad but not angry with me when I failed or did something wrong that I knew better than to do. 

When I graduated from F&M, then Delaware Law School and passed the New Jersey Bar Exam, she beamed with delight. Even more so when I began my employment with the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender. 

I was her first born, arriving into the world in Albany, Georgia at the aptly named Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital while my father was stationed at the former Turner Air Force Base. I was her pride and joy. 

It’s not that she didn’t love my sister, too. Oh, did she ever. But they butted heads a lot as mothers and daughters do. In fact, my mother made sure to remind me that my sister was a  girl, not my personal batting practice pitcher nor goalie when I shot frozen tennis balls at her to emulate the NHL players I watched so religiously. 

Don’t worry—my sister turned out all right. She played high school softball and tennis, then started upon the women’s tennis team at Monmouth College, now Monmouth University. We shared a love for the Yankees, Jets and New York Rangers. Plus she became a great rare coin dealer in a world dominated by men. 

The point is that we both wouldn’t have turned out to be the people we became without our mother’s patient guidance. For as independent as we wanted to be, we needed her as much as she needed us. 

When she returned to work as a business education teacher at Piscataway High School, our mother shared he insights and stories with us. We learned culture by attending plays with her. 

My mother’s favorite book was The Yearling, the classic written by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. At first, I thought the author was from the family which made my first baseball glove. In the end, my sister and I both read it because my mother was so enthralled with it. 

There is a lot I missed with her passing. So there will always be a hole in my heart because of that. 

But I was fortunate enough to marry a woman so like my mother. I didn’t know it at first other than my future wife went to the same college as my mother—Hunter in the Bronx. Quite the coincidence that they went to the same school while my father and I both went to F&M, and the women were slightly older than the men.

Both were educated to become teachers. They both returned to the workforce as teachers after their children were old enough to fend for themselves. 

While the age gap between my sister and I wasn’t as huge between our children, my wife was gifted with a boy and girl in the same order as my mother. And many of the same things I observed growing up were emulated in the growth of my son and daughter. 

It is uncanny how good and athletic they both became. Our son was an All State tennis player who was ranked as a junior player. Not to be outdone, our daughter played tennis and excelled at competitive gymnastics, performing as a member of the Penn State club team competing against other club teams from a variety of schools. 

Neither one of them would have turned out as well educated and successful as a lawyer  (our son) and in film production (our daughter) without their closeness to their mother. She always was their biggest cheerleader, something which was harder for me to do. 

Every competition she could attend, my wife did. Every trip to tennis or gymnastics practice, it seemed that my wife ferried them there. 

They still come to her for advice, comfort and to tease. I see the closeness they have and it makes me so proud and fortunate to have experienced this, not once but twice. 

I look at the athletes of today and I think of the parent who gave unfailing support to their children. Whether it is high profile Division I basketball or a DIII football or baseball game, a cadre of mothers are there to cheer and provide the food to fuel their kids after the games are played. 

I love Senior Day in collegiate sports when the parents are acknowledged for all the hard work behind the children they have raised. Giving the mothers roses is a beautiful gesture for all they have sacrificed. Just as much as I loved watching Derek Jeter’s parents or Steph Curry’s parents (before the not-so-amicable split they played out in public) or for that matter any mother in the stands proudly wearing her child’s number while anxiously rooting for the best. 

When the MLB players sport pink equipment and socks in solidarity behind Breast Cancer Awareness, it is out of love for those who gave them the most love. It is a beautiful tribute. 

For athletes and non-athletes alike share a passion: absolute caring for their mothers. It is a mutual thing. 

Yes, there was sports this week. The New York Knicks jumped out to a 2-0 lead over the Boston Celtics as did the Indiana Pacers over the Cleveland Cavaliers before losing on their respective home courts. Denver and Oklahoma City are battling hard. Golden State suffered a significant loss when Steph Curry strained his hamstring in Game 1 of their series with Minnesota, greatly jeopardizing the team’s chances to move on. 

Toronto blew a game against the Florida Panthers which could have put them up 3-0; instead the series is now likely going to go seven games. Dallas is beating up on Winnipeg.  Edmonton and Carolina are ahead of higher-ranked opponents. That’s your NHL update.

The Yankees and Mets continue to win more than they lose as they head to their showdown next weekend. Aaron Judge still leads MLB in almost every offensive category and returned his batting average to over .400 after a slight dip. Meanwhile, Colorado really stinks—they lost 20-0 to San Diego and after winning on Sunday, are a pathetic 7-32. 

Finally, kudos to the Rutgers-Camden baseball team. The Scarlet Raptors entered the NJAC playoffs as the sixth and final seed. When the smoke cleared, RU-C won all its games, defeating the top seeds, thereby claiming the conference’s automatic NCAA bid for the first time ever. 

I wish them well. I bet they had a ton of maternal support on this unlikely journey. 

Mother’s Day 2025. Gotta love it.