On Mothers Day, remembering wonderful women who did their jobs well

I have known four generations of mothers.

It's actually five -- my great-grandmother was with us till I was 17, but the infrequent contacts I had with her didn't really show her in her role as my grandmother's mother.

But the four I have known -- my grandmother, my mother, my wife and my daughter -- would all rank in any Motherhood Hall of Fame I could create. While only one of them was actually my mother, I would have been lucky to have any of them fill that role.

I have been so fortunate. My grandmother Florence Kindinger lived to be 94, which meant she was with us until I was 40. She lived almost her entire life in a small town in north central Ohio, a town I found almost impossibly boring when I was younger, but a town I have missed desperately since the last time I was there in 1990 for my grandmother's funeral.

435 N. Henry St., 1985

I will never forget something my cousin Peter Kindinger said when we went back to my grandparents' house after the ceremony. "We have spent so many wonderful times in this house, and this is probably the last time we will ever set foot in it."

Sadly, he was right.

The group shot on the left is from five years earlier, when we came to Crestline to bury my grandfather. My grandmother is in the middle of the top row. Peter is lower left in the white shirt.

The front steps are completely blocked from view, but I realized in 2010 when I was thinking about good memories that I realized those steps may have been the place where I was most happy in (then) 60 years on earth. For something like four summers, from 1959-62, I used to stand on the sidewalk at the end of the walkway and practice pitching by throwing a rubber ball against the steps.

I measured my success by the strike zone, and I worked hard to catch the ball as it came back.

My parents, 2006

I never had the opportunity to play in organized leagues, but during the time I spent visiting my grandparents each summer, I got the chance to play in semi-organized games down at the park. I wasn't great -- certainly not a prospect -- but I was well above average. My love for baseball was not unrequited.

That wasn't why I was there. The best part of summer was always the time I spent with my grandparents, and when those times came to an end I was sad. The last time I visited them was in 1985, when I was returning to St. Louis after going home for two weeks for my vacation.

My grandmother had more common sense and basic insight than anyone else I have ever known. She was also very kind. I don't think I ever heard her say anything mean or sarcastic about anyone else.

Unless I live to be 80, I will always be happy to say she was a part of my life for more than half of my life.

Crestline was where I also discovered a connection over the years with my mother. I was a voracious reader, and I went to the public library every couple of days to check out a handful of books. The librarian always put them on the card my mother had used as maybe the smartest kid ever to graduate from Crestline High School.

I hardly know what to say about my mother. I have said and done things over the years that have hurt her, and I wish I could unsay every one of them.

All my earliest memories are of her, which is no great surprise, but the one that seems to come almost out of nowhere must be from 1954. I was 4 years old and we were living in Dayton. I have the vaguest memory of the tiny apartment we shared, but I remember playing with Lincoln Logs in the evening. That's it. Nothing else.

If there was one thing I always believed, it was that no one ever loved me more than my mother did. And through some pretty awful times, and problems I caused that she never could have expected, she never abandoned me or even tried the "tough love" some people use that is way too tough and not nearly loving enough.

She was also as hard a worker and as talented as anyone I knew. When I met and married my second wife, I was amazed to find someone else who was as talented and dedicated as my mother.

I still have two generations to go -- my wonderful wife and my amazing daughter -- but I'm going to wait till tomorrow for that. My mother and her mother are plenty for this one story.

Two truly wonderful mothers. I was a very lucky boy.