John P. Wise, Contributing Writer

"You can forget about college, you can forget about basketball, you can forget about everything," my mom shouted at me at about 2 in the morning 15 years ago. I was a high school senior, and she and her third husband were driving me home from the police station after I got in the only fistfight I ever won. At the middle of a busy intersection on a Saturday night, I pummeled this punk so badly that even his kids won't ever see straight.

About 10 hours later, Chris, Kevin and Perry were asking me to go on Spring Break to Myrtle Beach with them the following Friday. "How much money do you need?" my mom asked.

That's how my mom was. She had every intention of putting her foot down, but she was just too nice. She still is that way. She doesn't work and she doesn't have much money, but she and Mike, her fourth husband of about 13 years now, must have some sort of arrangement that I don't ask about because it often results in her dropping some money in my pocket every time I go home, which I just realized I need to do more often. She would rather give everything she has to me than keep even a little bit for herself.

For every hundred or so stories I could tell that would prompt positive memories, there are a couple that might not be so joyous. Like the time she accidentally shut the car door on my left hand, causing me to cry all the way into Sears seeking medical attention for what turned out to be nothing more than a scrape or a bruise.

There's also the time when she chased me all around our spacious, two-story condo when I was probably 5 years old until she was able to pin me down on the ground and straddle me while she applied the eye drops I so dreaded before an eye doctor's appointment.

A trip home to Cleveland seldom is without the telling of those tales. We still laugh our heads off at them.

Mom spent many Saturday afternoons watching me kick the Nerf soccer ball around the living room while she answered phone calls for the local Rape Crisis hotline. Perhaps that's partly why I turned out to be somewhat of a contradiction; some would say I enjoy single life to the fullest, yet I cringe when co-working males feel the need to supply shoulder massages to our female colleagues in the newsroom. I feel blessed to have been able to eavesdrop on the philosophies she'd impart on those anonymous callers -- considered survivors, by the way, not victims.

Also, while I'd kick the ball around the house, my mom would spend some Sundays doing paperwork for her job. She sold linens to businesses, but she claimed the job wasn't as glamorous as it sounded. Nonetheless, she'd often ask me to add or subtract some numbers, and many times, I'd compute the correct answer in my head before she'd get it on the calculator. My weird workings once occasioned a phone call home from my ninth-grade Algebra teacher, Mr. Gleisser, who suspected me of always having the right answer without showing the pesky work -- or, better said, cheating. Mom, always in my corner, insisted that ever since I was little, I could see the numbers in my head. I endured my remaining high school years known as the guy guilty of "Voodoo Math."

I once told a recent girlfriend that part of my attraction toward her was because she was a single mom. Sure she had her struggles, but overcoming them as impressively as she did only showed to me her strength, something I observed in my own mom while growing up. I figured if this girl was like mom, she must be a catch.

But of course, that didn't work out, as they so often don't, and mom had to talk me through another heartbreak. It was the second one of 2002, which, for those scoring at home, was by far the worst year of my life. Mom gave me the courage to get out of bed and pursue a job after I'd been laid off. She also gave me the wisdom to understand that someone way better will come along when the woman I thought I was going to marry ditched me for another dude. She gave me the serenity in knowing things will most certainly turn around.

Well, guess what? Things have turned around. Things are outstanding. The tunnel that was once at the end of the tunnel turned into a light some months ago. Now, light is all there is. I can't thank anyone more than my mom for helping me realize the brightness of that light. Not even myself.

Has your mom done anything like this for you? I bet she has. Have you thanked her for it? I bet you haven't.