Mom's lessons on life, love have paid off

When is it really love?

Today is Valentine's Day. Today also commemorates my mother's birthday as well as my friend Arlene's birthday.

My Mom is a florist. There is something ironic about a florist having a birthday on the busiest holiday of the year for florists.

Not only are they reminded that they are a year older all day long but after a day of standing on their feet making arrangements and greeting customers, they must feel 10 years older at the end of the day.

I can honestly say I have never sent my mother flowers for her birthday. It's a son's intuition.

My Mom taught me a lot about people — she was a social worker before she became a florist.

She taught me how to drive. She taught me how to do laundry. "If you are old enough to sweat you are old enough to do your own laundry," she said about the time I hit junior high.

For a time when she was a single mother, she taught me that Twinkies came in packages of three because that was just enough for she, my sister and me to have one Twinkie each.

She also taught me how cool drive in theaters could be. Watching Star Wars at a drive in the back of a Ford Falcon station wagon. Could it get any better than that?

She also taught me about responsibility — whether it was getting out of bed every morning at 4:30 to deliver newspapers, or bucking hay bales for two weeks in a row of 100-degree days — she instilled a work ethic that I'm afraid is missing with a lot of people in our society.

When I ran out of money at college, she was there. When I needed new basketball shoes, she was there. When I broke my arm at my 10th birthday party when a rope swing broke, she was the one who splinted my arm with a phone book and drove me 80 miles to the nearest hospital.

We had to have been poor. Trying to feed a family of three on a social worker's wage couldn't have been easy. If we were, I never knew it.

While there are hundreds of other examples of Mom's life lessons, one sticks out more than the rest. It might be sexist, it might be outdated, but here it is:

"Treat other people — especially those of the opposite sex — with admiration and respect."

That was it.

As I look around my life now, I know that advice continues to be sound.

Because I was smart enough to listen to my mother, I opened up the opportunity to marry a wonderful woman, who is a loving mother to our children and is my best friend.

Marlisa and I are raising a son who is learning that same lesson and a daughter who benefits from that advice.

As I examine who I am and where I am right now, I see my Mom's guiding hand.

I am constantly amazed by the smart and beautiful women who surround me. Whether it is at work or out of the office or at my in-laws' house in Ponderay.

You know who you are.

So on this Valentine's Day, I want you, Marlisa, Nancy and Olivia and all of the women who surround me to know you are loved and respected.

I'm telling you this because I learned it from my Mom.

? David Keyes is publisher of the Bee. His column run weekly or whenever it can save him a few dollars by not buying flowers or Hallmark cards.