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She was pregnant for eleven years and three months. Not all at one time, of course. She had sixteen children as the result of fifteen pregnancies-there was one set of twins. They all had the same father. Two died at birth, leaving fourteen surviving children.

She never fought in a war, ran into a burning building to rescue a child or stopped a mugging in progress, but motherhood alone was enough to make her a hero in my eyes. However, there was more to her life than that. I ought to know because I was number eight of fourteen.

My mother descended from a Viking who helped settle Normandy. She must have inherited some of his Viking spirit. She not only raised fourteen children, devoting time and energy to each one; she served for almost thirty years as a Baptist pastor's wife. In those days a Baptist pastor's wife was considered an unpaid employee of the church. So my mother taught Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, produced Christmas plays, and was a gracious hostess, and sometimes a counselor, to parishioners who visited our home.

After most of us had grown up, my father became ill and had to retire. My mother felt she needed to do something to supplement their income. She had taken a few college courses after she graduated from high school, but now at age 56 she wanted to complete her education. So she enrolled in Trinity College in Burlington, Vermont.

Four years later, she graduated with a B.A. degree. While attending college, she looked after my father and my two youngest siblings, all the while maintaining a high grade point average. After graduation, she taught in private schools for ten years.

She never stopped being a mother, even after she retired from teaching. When my second oldest sister got cancer, my mother moved to Virginia to help take care of her until my sister died. Then she moved to New York State for awhile, until another sister got sick. My mother then moved to North Carolina to help take care of her.

My mother was an active woman up until the end of January 2002, when she was admitted to the hospital and died a few days later, at the age of 78.

Whenever I got discouraged my mother would tell me to get up and get going. She would tell me to just keep putting one foot in front of the other-to plod on. If I laid down and quit, she said I'd never get up again. However, if I kept on moving eventually I would feel good again.

The importance of plodding on, when both the body and mind tell you to quit, was the most important lesson my mother taught me. I have been running a small business, selling antiquarian books, for around fourteen years. I also do some free-lance writing on the side. Several times I have been tempted to get out of the book business and to quit writing because of the long hours, hard work and inconsistent income, even though I love doing both. It's during those times when I want to quit that I hear my mother's voice-"get up, get going, don't quit, just put one foot in front of the other until you feel better, plod on."
I wouldn't be hearing those words today, if they had just been words-sounds emptied of all meaning. But they weren't just empty sounds because mom backed up everything she said by the heroic and uncomplaining way she lived her life.

Learn more about this author, Dan Weaver.
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