Happy Mother's Day!

Thursday, Sept. 18, was Mother's Day - at least it was for me.

To tell the truth, given the fact that I somehow turned out reasonably well-adjusted - despite what my mom had to work with - every day ought to be Mother's Day for me. I was small and lacking in streetsmarts, but that was all right. At Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School I fit in with the rest of the orderly and uniformed student body.

The problems started in seventh grade, when I moved to a tough public middle school in Henrico. My core problem was my lack of social skills. For example, my mom tried to get me to understand the importance of meeting minimum personal hygiene standards, but I was too clueless. Then one day a kid in math class looked at my greasy mop and asked (loudly), "How often do you wash your hair, man?"

"Once a week, just like anybody else," I answered. I mean, duh.

Soon I was shampooing every day or two, which gave me the opportunity to begin using a blow-dryer (it was the 1970s). My technique was to put a comb attachment on the thing and bring it down from the top of my head and out over my ear, creating a hat-head effect without actually having to wear a hat.

Then there was my wardrobe. My mom had zero experience buying kids' clothes - I was her first born, and she came from a Depression era family with 12 children. She probably wore hand-me-downs well into marriage. Meanwhile, I had no idea what clothes were cool, so I ended up in plaid slacks, button-up shirts and a big, wide, white belt.

I remember one day a kid looked at me and asked, "Man, why do you always dress like an executive?" Before I could answer, he punched me in the nose - just on fashion principle, I guess.

Soon I was wearing a pair of blue jeans to school - except they were about seven inches too long (so I could wear them through college), and I had to cuff them to keep them off the pavement. Naturally, stepping off the bus at school the first morning I wore them, I accidentally planted my left toe deep into the cuff of my right jeans leg and fell the three feet from the top of the bus stairs to the curb.

To say that middle school was challenging is like saying that September's stock market was a little bumpy.

Which brings me to why Sept. 18 was Mother's Day for me: that's the day it became clear to the federal government, Wall Street, the media and me that the already slumping economy now was in danger of collapsing into an even worse situation… possibly even a depression.

That scared the heck out of me, but I found comfort in the lessons Mom taught us growing up. Mom was born at the tail end of the Depression, in 1940, the eighth of 12 kids (Irish Catholic, of course). In her family, money and even food were always tight, and luxuries were non-existent. Clothes were passed around like colds, and the family made do with what they had. And what they had was each other. As a result, Mom doesn't value money or material things. She values people, especially family and friends.

Mom taught us those Depression-era values growing up by example. Even with just four kids in a good economy, our budget was always tight. But even after Dad landed a pretty good-paying job with Philip Morris, Mom's thriftiness held sway.

We were two kids to a room, a family of six in a house one-third the size of today's McMansions, eating fast food once a month as a treat. I thought we had color TV because the wood on top was reddish brown. The thing took so long to warm up we had to turn it on at 3:45 p.m. to see a 4 p.m. show. Microwave ovens had been on the market for 10 years before my Mom agreed to get a used one - a hulking box so big it came with its own technician and radiation badges. In our family, a new car wasn't broken in until it hit 100,000 miles (or until my brother or I actually broke it).

Complementing Mom's thriftiness of wallet is her generosity of heart. She and Dad are blessed with nine grandchildren, and if one can come over to Mom's house, she will do whatever she can to get them ALL over there. The more family you have together at once, the happier she is.

And she doesn't limit her gatherings to just family. In high school, our Christmases were a lot like the first Noel, because we usually had a couple of Jewish guys in the house. Two of my best friends, Robert and Darryl, were regulars at Christmas dinner, not because Mom was trying to convert them (although she would've), but because they were friends with no other plans that day.

All this was a comfort on Sept. 18 and has been since. Economics tells us that every bubble of artificially high values (such as dotcom stocks or housing prices) is followed by a correction, when values fall dramatically back into balance with reality.

When I compare today's world to the one Mom grew up in, and even the world I grew up in, it feels like our standard of living has become artificially inflated. With our easy credit, increasingly extravagant expectations and lack of financial discipline from our own street to Wall Street to both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, we seem ripe for a pretty significant lifestyle correction. And honestly, that scares the heck out of me.

Then I think of my mom and her parents and 11 siblings, jammed in a small house, scrambling to feed and clothe themselves - but they were rich in family, friends and faith. They made it. We can make it. Mom has shown us how.