Mother S Day

Looking for something fun to do with Mom on Mother's Day? Adrienne Shelly's Waitress, starring Keri Russell (of TV's Felicity) as a small-town Southern waitress who believes there's a pie for curing every ill society can dish up, will have a special Mother's Day screening today at 1:30 p.m. at The Rotunda Cinematheque, 711 W. 40th St. The film doesn't officially open in Baltimore until May 25, but those who take advantage of what Fox Searchlight Pictures...

They are the tiniest, the sickest, the ones who wouldn't survive without the linguine-like tubes and wires that link them to machines or outside their climate-controlled fishbowls. They lie unaware of the blinking monitors overhead, of the wash-up station that is a mandatory stop for any visitor, of their charts at the nurses' station detailing their food intake with precision. For moms whose newborns are in the neonatal unit at Anne Arundel Medical Center, Mother's Day won't offer rowdy parties of women enveloped by giggling kids and flower bouquets.

Carol Roddy will not get a Mother's Day card from her youngest son today. There won't be any flowers from him. And there won't be a Mother's Day dinner with him. Navy Petty Officer David Roddy, who specialized in defusing explosives, died in Iraq last fall. This is her first Mother's Day without him. "I was dreading Mother's Day," she said. Since her son's death, Roddy has been on a mission to revive the Maryland chapter of the American Gold Star Mothers - a support group created in 1928 by grieving mothers who lost their children in World War I. The group is a nonpolitical, nonprofit organization that seeks to "further all patriotic work," according to its charter.

ABERDEEN -- Sometime this morning, the day before Mother's Day, Lynda Juchniewicz will travel south through the god-awful congestion on Bel Air Road, make a left at the Exxon station in Perry Hall, and arrive at a small office building.There, in a luncheon ceremony at Comprehensive Nursing Services Inc., she will help donate a carousel horse in her son's memory to the Johns Hopkins Children's Center.It's a white carousel horse with blue ribbons, perky and proud, the kind that could make a sick kid smile even when he's hooked up to IV lines and frowning doctors loom over him with thick medical charts and each day brings another dose of pain and misery.

WIFE, MOTHER, sister, daughter, friend, publishing niche. The list of women's roles just got longer. Talk about your multi-tasking.Motherhood appears to be right up there with the Bible and cookbooks as a publishing industry stalwart. Especially at this time of year.Seems everybody buys a book for their mother for Mother's Day, proving yet again that nobody is paying any attention to her, because if they were, they would have at least a clue about what she would really like to have as a gift.

OTTAWA -- Scientists tell us it won't be long before medical technology makes it possible for men to bear children. In fact, Robert Winston, the British researcher who pioneered in-vitro fertilization, recently claimed that existing techniques enable a man to have an embryo implanted in his abdomen, carry it to term and deliver it by Caesarean section.The thought makes me, well, cringe.It's not simply that I'm queasy at the hubris of overturning millions (billions?) of years of evolution or uncertain at the ethical dilemmas of all those daddy dearests suddenly wanting seating priority on the bus.No, it's even more basic: I just can't think of dad as mom because, as any woman will tell you, being a mother is more than giving birth.

I AWOKE with childlike excitement last Father's Day, knowing that it was probably the only day my kids would express gratitude without wanting something in return. Somehow this one day makes a year's worth of trials and tribulations seem like a good deal.I felt an inner smile as the radio disc jockey said, "Let's send this out to all the dads this morning." Then he played the late Harry Chapin's "Cats in the Cradle," a song about a father's biggest failure in life: spending so much time wrapped up in his life that he neglects his child.

THE original Mother's Day, like all our best holidays, is of pagan origin. It was a celebration in Asia Minor in honor of Cybele.Known as the mother of the gods, Cybele was associated with some pretty repellent rituals, which eventually caused the banishment of her followers in Rome.The poet and classicist Robert Graves believed the battle between the pagan goddess and the Hebrew and Christian God to be fundamental to the development of Western civilization.In his book "King Jesus," Graves argued that Jesus declared war on "the female," or the White Goddess of birth, love and death.

The first 13 days of May were bad luck for garden store owners. Rain fell every day, driving customers indoors and muddying anticipated Mother's Day profits.Since then, the weather has been dry -- and the cash drawers have been as green as the flower beds, gardening merchants say.The month's streaks of downpour and dryness balanced each other out. Despite the wet start, the month ended with almost the average amount of rain for May, Scott Wendt, a meteorologist with Weather Central Inc. of Madison, Wis., said yesterday.

When Cassandra Tancil arrives at La Petite Academy day care center with her two children, she looks like a woman in the middle of a list of things to do.It is a breezy morning and she is carrying light jackets for 4-year-old Jillian and 6-year-old Evan and she is asking them to hang up the jackets, but while she is asking, she is doing it herself.The children have already drifted away from her, distracted by their friends, a breakfast snack and a room full of kid-sized stuff.She says, "Remember to put on your listening ears for the teacher," but the listening ears must still be in the children's pockets.

Sheila Tates is clipping coupons for the first time in her life. The Baltimore resident, a mother and grandmother, also is endeavoring to save money by canceling her home phone and premium cable television channels. But recession or no, she says, Mother's Day is no occasion to skimp. So she and 18 family members, representing four generations, spent about $75 apiece to board a Spirit Cruises ship at the Inner Harbor for a two-hour sail that featured a buffet and dancing. "As a family, we're not in a recession; we're in reverse and have been cutting back every day," Tates said.

My siblings and I think our mother is an all-around joyful role model in the Mom department. Because we grew up under her tutelage, we don't seem to mind if she rearranges our cabinets, tells us we ought to give our front doors a fresh coat of paint, or remarks that it's high time we replaced our frayed bath towels when she visits. We welcome the wealth of time-tested tips she provides on child-rearing, home organization and budgeting. Well, um, most of the time. But, my point is, it sure is funny how the very same suggestions coming from a mother-in-law tend to rattle us. When, in fact, it's all about nurturing.

I was going to visit my mother on Sunday and bring her a jonquil and a ballpoint pen for Mother's Day, but that's all off thanks to my brother, who is awaiting trial for mail fraud. His lawyers have asked me not to discuss his case, and so I won't, except to say that he's guilty, the little stinker, and richly deserves what's coming to him, but of course you can't tell Mother that. She turns 94 this week and still lives in her own home, drives her own car and only recently gave up playing senior women's hockey.

Soon after he turned 18, Charles Yi Barnett told his mother he wanted to join the Army. "I said 'No, you're not going anywhere,' " said his mother, Ipun "Yvonne" Dashiell. She forced one military recruiter to leave her home, but the teenager was determined to enlist. He left for basic training almost exactly a year ago, and in May he was sent to Iraq. Late Thursday, military officials went to his mother and stepfather's Bel Air home with grim news: The 19-year-old had died that day of injuries he received in Tallil in a noncombat incident.

Mothers get a lot of bad press these days. It's disappointing that we typically only read stories about the ones who are abandoning, neglecting or otherwise harming their children, changing their identities so they can rip off a series of unsuspecting senior citizens or fleecing company accounts after years of loyal service. In that spirit and on this Mother's Day, I'm revealing the astounding fact that I was raised by Glinda the Good. No kidding. She even looked like her, with wispy curls of blond hair and sparkling blue eyes and a beautiful smile that felt like an embrace when it shined your way. Even so, it was the inside stuff -- her essential kindness, selflessness, integrity and generosity of spirit -- that created that magic we all felt in her presence.

If productivity was down in your workplace last week, you can blame your mother. All across the Baltimore area, employees lingered through their lunch hour in card stores, reading and sighing. Buying a Mother's Day card is not easy. For some, the card that says, "Mom, thanks for being perfect," is fine, but for the rest of us, with complicated mothers and complicated relationships, the search for the right message is tough. But even as children (of all ages) struggle to summarize their maternal relationship in a card, those on the receiving end have mixed feelings too. Most mothers know that we don't come close to the platitudes in those greeting cards.

Every family has its own Mother's Day traditions. Mable Brown gets pampered by her nine children. Lydia Ruppert goes on a picnic. And Jeanne Litvin is treated to a lunch and a musical performance. But it isn't the gifts that mean the most - it's spending time with her children, Litvin said. "Being a mother is the most important thing that I will ever do in my life," said Litvin, who doesn't give her age. "People without children miss out on a lot. There's nothing like hearing from your children, not just on Mother's Day, but any day."

The Baltimore Sheriff's Office has apprehended dozens of child-support scofflaws in raids this week that were scheduled to coincide with Mother's Day. Deputies began the enforcement sweep early Monday morning and plan to continue through today. They have also joined with officials from neighboring counties to identify and pursue parents who are delinquent in their child-support obligations. As of yesterday afternoon, deputies had taken 83 people into custody as part of "Operation Mother's Day," Sheriff John W. Anderson's office said.

The last time I witnessed a woman becoming a mother, it wasn't anything like the frilly sentiments of Mother's Day. She lay on her back, perspiring heavily and yelling, "Oh my God, why did you do this to me? I'll never forgive you in a hundred years. I hope you hurt like this someday. Give me another epidural, you sadists. And get this thing out of me!" and looking up at me as if she were burning at the stake and I had lit the fire. And when the Infant appeared and was placed on the Madonna's chest, she said, "What in the world am I supposed to do with that?"

It was a picture-perfect day to celebrate motherhood, and what better place than ... the race track? But for a few families in the thin crowd at Pimlico yesterday, the love was thick - even if the luck was so-so. Lucille Huff, a self-described $2 bettor, came up from Washington - bringing her son, Keith Huff, 46 - and put $12 on the horses. They dined on hot dogs and took in the races from a front bench, and they stepped a few feet over to the green rail at the edge of the track to cheer as the horses trampled by during the day of nine races.