Today (Dec. 6) is my mother’s 100^th birthday.

It’s only in the past year or two we’ve seen any sign of decline in her vitality. Her energy belies her age and puts to shame many another who has seen half as many summers.

The eldest daughter in a family of nine children, she learned early responsibility and hard work. She possesses a multitude of talents that could not be learned in any school but life, and I don’t mean culinary and household skills, though she excels in these as well.

An eternal optimist with an indomitable spirit, she is always an inspiration in times of discouragement.

She has always been a liberal, open to new ideas and unafraid of change, but one guided by solid principles from which she never veers. If she has any vice it is a streak of stubbornness that brooks no interference with the goals she sets for herself.

She inherited a love of travel from her vagabond father and has roamed widely on her own and with me and has proven a boon companion whale-watching in Massachusetts in her  on jaunts in her advanced eighties, earlier on jaunts in outback Mexico and the Canadian wilds as well as in more placid tourist areas.

She always has been my primary booster and supporter of any enterprise in which I engaged, reason in itself for respect and love.

Finding a significant way to pay tribute to one’s mother isn’t the easiest task in the world. If you’ve been fortunate enough to have a good mother, there’s no gift you can buy that’s sufficient to alleviate the guilt of not being able to do more.

So, this blog, then, is a small token of appreciation for my own and all those other mothers whose devotion didn’t end when their children left the nest.