Were she here, she’d be 103 years old this Mother’s Day. I know, you’re never supposed to mention a lady’s age. Maggie, however, was no lady. She was our mom. Of course, “mom” was only one of the hats she wore. She was the CEO (in absentia) of my father’s real estate business. Long before women’s lib became the rage, he was wise enough to never make a decision without consulting her. When she wasn’t running the business, she was hitting backhands down the line; sending golf balls up the fairway; bidding one no trump with the girls; bringing the haughty down to earth with a well-placed wise crack; running our ranch, The Lazy J; raising three boys; and keeping a sharp eye on the clock for when those TV dinners were due to come out of the oven.

When you live at the end of a mile-long dirt road, and the pipes freeze during the frosts; the power goes off during the storms; the cars get stuck in the mud; and the neighbors are calling because the cattle are continually breaking through the fences, the Ozzie and Harriet days of the ’50s — back in the cozy Piedmont neighborhood where the most daunting task was getting a sitter so you could head out to the Berkeley tennis club — look pretty good.

How she ever put up with her husband, Jim Pop, leaving the city and moving to the Lazy J is beyond me. She gave up her friends and her life so he could live his and raise his boys in the country. Instead of shopping with her girlfriends and attending teas, she had to put up with the manure on the boots; the flies from the cattle and horses; the blood and feathers from slaughtering the chickens in the basement; the wail of the peacocks; the training and feeding of the dogs and cats; bottle feeding the lambs; nursing the animals at all hours of the night; even the fear of being trapped by raging fire. It was called life in the country—where the closest people were a mile away and where the howl of the coyotes let you know you were never alone at night.

From Bill McGurn’s magnificent reflection on Mother’s Day in the New York Post:

[F]or my bride, the path to Mother’s Day had no swelling of the belly, no morning sickness, no assurance that some time after nine months there would be an infant in her arms. The only physical signs of pending motherhood were a sheaf of forms and a single passport-size photo we received at some point in each adoption.

Delivery was different, too. Three times we checked into a Chinese hotel. Three times a tiny little girl was brought to our room. Three times I watched my wife wrap her baby in a love so natural and so fierce anyone watching would have thought the two had been meant to be together since the beginning of time.