I’m jumping ahead a little bit. This, perhaps, could have waited until next week. But I’m thinking that some of you need an early reminder.

A week from Sunday we celebrate Mother’s Day.

So, get out your little George Jetson device and tell it to poke you, or ding you, or say to you, along about next Wednesday, “Hey stupid. Don’t forget your mama.”

A man who forgets his mama on Mother’s Day is lower than a slug. He is the toe fungus of humanity. His stupidity runs deep, and his excuses won’t hold water.

The woman who raised me will forever be etched in my memory. She was a mix of June Cleaver (the pearls, the dress, the hair) and Ma Kettle (country, barefoot in the vegetable garden, and tough).

She was up at 5am making biscuits. She got me ready for school every weekday and for church on Sundays. She canned, she cooked, she cleaned, she sewed, she listened. Often, she fell asleep late in the evening sitting in her chair in the den, stitching up a hole or replacing a zipper. Everything she did was “for us” it seems.

You see, in order to be a mother, you have to be selfless. Once the children come along, life is no longer about you but it’s about them. What you want takes a back seat. What you need comes last. Whatever you were dreaming about doing with your life is set aside for the sake of being a mother.

Not every mother becomes that person. You really don’t have to be selfless to give birth and become a biological mother. But as a house without love is not a home, a mother without sacrifice is not much of a mama.

Sound harsh? Maybe it is. Life can be hard and unfair. I get that. Some girls are too young. They’re not ready. They didn’t have a mama to show them the ropes. It’s cruel to blame them for circumstances outside their control.

That saddens me. The temptation is to be critical and judgmental, rather than compassionate and understanding. From where I sit motherhood is pretty darn close to sainthood. To not be that mother, or to grow up without a mother like that is a loss that has ripple effects for generations.

My mama grew up in the 1920s and 30s. She was kicked out of her home with her sister at a very young age. Her grandmother raised the two girls. It was a hard life. Though she seldom talked about it, I got bits and pieces of her story over the years.

Her mama walked out on the two of them. She disappeared into the sea of a city called Atlanta never to be heard from again. Her mama remarried and raised another family. Never once did she try to contact my mama. It was a hurt that stayed with her until the end.

At this point in my life, having been a parent and knowing something of what it takes to raise a family, I am amazed and grateful for the mother she became. What I admire most is how she never allowed that hurt to shape her life. I’m guessing that many who knew her, and knew her well, never knew about her childhood. She refused to let her past limit her future.

She moved away from home and found a new life. What was in the past stayed there. She and Dad took in her sister’s children after Hazel’s untimely death at age 26. Her first trial run at motherhood was with children not her own.

I have often wondered about what she dreamed of doing with her life. Those raised during the Great Depression didn’t have the luxury of too many dreams, I suppose. You did what you had to do to make life work. You got a job, got married, and raised a family. That was the path.

Maybe selfless sacrifice was more readily ingrained back then. You didn’t have to learn it. It just came to you by way of necessity.

You would have liked her, I’m sure. She yelled and screamed at my baseball games. She let me taste the juice while she was making jellies and jams. She loved to have extra people at her kitchen table for supper. She loved Elvis. She could sew anything for anybody. She wore an apron in the kitchen. She cut coupons from the AJC. She saved the comic section for me. She rooted plant cuttings in mason jars set in the window sill. She sang in the choir at church.

I remember a thousand little things. She took piano lessons in her fifties. She took a trip to Hawaii to see Elvis. She lived in the same house as her mother-in-law. Bless her heart. She picked beans. She swept floors. She ironed clothes and folded underwear. She pulled feathers and gutted chickens. She read magazines. And she could tell you who was unfaithful to whom on “As the World Turns.”

There’s more. She was kind and thoughtful. She laughed at my dad’s silliness. She stood by the back door and quietly sniffled into a Kleenex. She cooked food for funerals. She said thank you for some pretty awful Christmas gifts from her son. She was strong and resilient. She was calm under pressure, except for the one time I saw her slap my sister for having a smart mouth.

I had the best mother on earth. That’s what nearly everyone says about their mother.

I was on an elevator one time just a few years ago. The man standing beside me was wearing a T-shirt that said, “I’m the Best Grandpa in the World.” I looked at him and said, “That can’t be true. My grandkids tell me I’m the best.” He didn’t think I was funny.

But if you had a good one, that’s how you see your mama. The best. She’s the woman who gave you everything you needed in life. She loved you. She tucked you in at night. She gave you cough syrup when you were sick, and she believed that an enema could cure any stomach ailment. She was quick to be tough on you, and even quicker to forgive you.

When the Good Lord gave us mothers, he did it because He knew you would need her. You needed someone good with a Band-Aid. You needed someone to teach you how to tie a shoelace. You needed someone who would sit on the side of your bed and rub your legs when they cramped up at night. You needed someone to cry at your wedding.

We used to pin a rose on our lapel on Mother’s Day. Red to celebrate the living. White to honor the dead. If I had one, I’d be wearing white.

I hate that, in the end, my mama forgot who she was. She forgot who I was. She forgot most everything about our life together.

If your mama is still living, call her. Go see her. Even if she wasn’t perfect, don’t let her be forgotten. She deserves that much from you.

Otherwise, be content being a slug.