Few know this, but my real mother died quite early in my life. She wasn't around long to teach me what I needed to know to be a man, but she was around long enough to teach me the beginnings of being a person. She taught me to think before I speak, she taught me to say please and thank you.

But the most important gift my biological mother gave me was a belief in my own mind. She pushed for me to go to one of the finest schools in North America, even though we couldn't afford it. She believed in me, even if I was too young to believe in myself. This is what mothers do with their sons - against their heaartfelt instincts, they push them forward into the world to prove themselves. My mother was smart, beautiful, ambitious and quite Irish for a Texan. Her name was Doris, and she had hazel eyes.

Years later, after many years of being a just a father-and-son household, my father finally met another woman. She was practical, funny, diminutive in stature but hard-working. She had lost a husband before, and she had no delusions about forever. She was around for some of the most important times in my life, and all of the choices that go with entering adulthood: my first real job, my first years at college, the birth of my own child.

What she taught me was very different, and was often in the form of cryptic little sayings: "Don't be backwards for coming forwards" (State your true intent, don't be coy); or "Tak the bit an the buffet" (You have to take the bad with the good). She taught me that though life is hard, I might as well get after it. She taught me that honesty, toughness, forthrightness, both with self and others, that's what made a man. She now suffers from advanced Alzheimers and lives in a home. She neither remembers me nor my father, who passed away in 1995. In some ways, I feel better that she's forgotten, because she loved him very much and it pained her to lose another husband. Her name is Catherine, she has laughing eyes, red hair and a thick Scottish brogue.

These were different lessons from different teachers, to be sure, and I am lucky to have had two mothers in my time. The higher truth came to me as a hybrid of their upbringing: That the world is your oyster, and you have to work to get the pearl.

In the middle of all these was another teacher of sorts. But "teacher" is a bit strong to say of his role. He was, however, an excellent guide.

He didn't teach me right from wrong. That was covered. He didn't teach me how to tie my shoelaces, or to always tell the truth, or the rules of fair play. That's what parents do. I use the word "guide" because that's all he's ever done - show things to people, tell people about about times and places and people that, in many cases, never existed. Ultimately that "guide" was to somewhere inside of me, inside of each of our own minds, to a place where we knew almost anything was possible, if you imagine it. And in those places, there is good, there is evil, and there are people brave enough to believe.

He didn't teach me to be a better person, nor did he ever intend to. He only showed me perhaps the more important truth: that believing in a better world, and making a better world, is up to me. His name is George, he has a beard, and he lives somewhere in Califorina. I've never met him, nor do I think it likely. All the same, he's been a guide.

These are not the only people I have learned from, either from afar or nearby, and there will be many more. The lessons of my youth were compounded, shaped, guided, sometimes twitsted, sometimes fortified by many people; some I knew, some I admired, some I aspired to be. But perhaps the most important truth I could share is what this particular trio taught me: That the world is your oyster, and you have to work to get the pearl. But you'll only find it if you can first imagine it.

Happy Mothers Day to my two mothers, and Happy Birthday to a visionary. :0) Thanks for showing me the way.

DM out