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What is a mother? Merriam-Webster defines mother in its simplest terms, “a female parent.”

Other dictionaries start off with the primary definition of a mother as “someone who has given birth. Merriam-Webster in my mind has it right. A mother is so much more than “someone who has given birth.” Using that definition eliminates so many mothers, adoptive mothers, foster mothers, godmothers, grandmothers and more.

Mother’s Day always makes me remember, with fondness, my own mother, gone now nearly 11 years. The first Mother’s Day column for my mom I wrote, I wrote because I was in trouble. I was working in Lovell at the time. It was a Wednesday morning in June, which for a small weekly is production day. The editor/publisher usually wrote the column or editorial but that day he was running behind and asked if I’d write something. It was just before Father’s Day so I whipped out a column about my dad.

The first words out of my mother’s mouth when I talked to her after she got her paper — “Why haven’t you ever written about me?” So the following Mother’s Day rolls around and I remember this and ask my editor if I can write a column about my mom. She liked the column about my dad, and about her later and I knew she wasn’t really mad, but rather was only teasing me.

My mother and I had a close but strange relationship, strange in the things we did together.

One Christmas we were teasing each other and chasing each other around the living room (I don’t quite remember why). She stopped right in front of our artificial tree and grabbed me and I broke away in which she lost her balance and fell into the tree and onto several packages.

We both started laughing uncontrollably. My father wandered up from the basement looked at us, looked at the tree and said “Who’s cleaning this up?” To which we busted out laughing again.

We bent the branches back into shape and repaired the wrapping jobs on the present. It was a memory that made us smile every time we talked about it.

We talked about everything when I was growing up and even into adulthood. No subject was really off limits.

That’s what a mother is. A mother isn’t defined by DNA or biology but rather by the relationship she has with her children.

Happy Mother’s Day to mothers of all kinds.