With Mother’s Day just ahead, I have an inclination to dedicate this column to the memory of my own mother.

Mother’s Day was never her favorite holiday. She liked presents and Dad and I did our best to live up to her expectations.

What she objected to was wearing a white flower in memory of a mother no longer living.

My father had a huge rose garden and every Sunday as my mother was leaving for church, he was waiting with the most perfect rose in bloom for her to pin to her dress.

On Mother’s Day, though my grandmother had been gone for 10 years, the rose my mother wore was never white.

&uot;If you really love someone,&uot; she told me, &uot;that person will always be alive for you.&uot;

I started to school when I was five. My mother had started on the day I was born to read aloud to me. I thought I could read. When she saw how upset I was at learning that I couldn’t read, she borrowed a first grade primer from a teaching friend and in a couple of evenings I could read it straight through.

Loving music, she sent me to her teacher and saw to it that I practiced. I hated every minute of it. When my teacher took her annual summer vacation, my mother took my musical education in hand and by the time the teacher returned I’d gotten past the part of the music book that was simply disguised scales and had learned to play &uot;Old Black Joe,&uot; and the like.

Not that I was let off from the scales, not that I began at once to practice without protest, but I did develop an interest I’d never before experienced.

Every spring there was a Camp Fire Girl Birthday week. Every day was marked with a different activity. One day three long blocks were chained off so the girls could have a roller skating party.

I wasn’t a good skater. So I made excuses to my four best friends and came home after school. When my mother, a Camp Fire leader herself, discovered I was home, she handed me my roller skates and instructions for &uot;getting with it.&uot; In vain did I protest that I wasn’t a very good skater. &uot;Then you need the practice.&uot;

&uot;My friends have already gone,&uot; I whined, &uot;They’ll be someplace in the crowd and I won’t know anyone.&uot;

&uot;Nothing in the world as exciting as making new friends,&uot; said my mother, &uot;This will give you a splendid opportunity.&uot;

I went off sullenly to the skating party &045; and had the time of my life. I did make several new friends that remained my friends all through the years I remained in Nebraska and even beyond. I found my other friends, too, and was amazed to discover that several of them didn’t skate any better than I did. It was quite a revelation.

Before I ever started school, my mother gave me two long-lasting instructions. She told me never to take sides in a quarrel between two girls and never to say anything critical about one of them to the other. &uot;If you do, when they make up both of them will turn on you.&uot; I took her advice and it never happened to me, but I still see it happen to people who get carried away by sympathy for a friend.

Her other piece of advice was even more helpful. When you’re meeting a person for the first time, always silently ask yourself, &uot;What can I do for this person? What can I learn from this person?&uot;

We had a garden every spring. There were swings in the backyard, too, and always kids in the neighborhood playing on them. On this one morning I had helped myself to some radishes, wiped the dirt off on my dress and was endeavoring to eat them while I swung.

It didn’t work; the radishes and I hit the ground and everyone laughed at me.

Outraged, I ran to the house and my mother, and tearfully complained. A good listener, she heard me out. My main complaint was that my friends had laughed at me.

&uot;Well, you really weren’t hurt,&uot; she said, &uot;or you couldn’t have made it to the house so fast. About the laughing &045; in some ways it’s a sad world. If you can make people laugh, it’s a gift from God. Be grateful and don’t begrudge them the pleasure.&uot;

She was right about that. She was right, too, when she said that if you really love someone that person will always be alive to you.

Love Cruikshank is an Albert Lea resident. Her column appears Thursdays.