Mums the Word

Mum’s the word
though some say Mom
perhaps depending where you’re from
In any case it’s what I’d bawl
before I learned to talk at all
Then she’d appear and cast her spell:  
The Mum who mothered me so well

She went by other names of course
when she put her cart before my horse
Or threw a fit and got upset
when I ate ten hot dogs on a bet
Or trotted out the old reply
“because I said so, dear, that’s why”

But all that happened in the past
and then the years went by so fast
that much of it remains a blur
except for memories of her
still crystal clear when every May
I think of Mum on Mother’s Day