Mother's Day 2009

For Mother's Day this year, I want to list ten of my favorite television mothers. In many respects, they resemble my own mom in that they love their kids. Enjoy!

1. Annie Camden (7th Heaven): She is feisty and firm in her beliefs, but she has a strong moral center and tries to teach her kids to do the right thing.

2. Caroline Ingalls (Little House on the Prairie): She has a sweet motherly demeanor, and she always tries to make her kids feel better, or at least to give them another way of looking at things. Sometimes, her advice can be tough, as when she told Laura to act like an adult after Charles called her a "little girl" in front of Almonzo.

3. Olivia Walton (The Waltons): She's often busy with the housework, but she's always there for her kids when they have problems.

4. Martha Kent (Smallville): She'd give her life for her son, Clark! She had always wanted a baby but was not able to have one (or so we thought until Season 2). Adopting Clark brought a lot of risks and perils, including the death of her husband, Jonathan. But she still loved her son.

5. Lara (Smallville): Lara is Clark's biological mother who lived on Krypton. Although she realized that she had to send Clark to earth because Krypton was falling apart around her, she wondered if the people on earth would take care of him. That's a sign of a good mother: she thinks about the well-being of her kids even when they are far away.

6. Nora Walker (Brothers and Sisters): I've only watched the first four episodes of this series, but she's probably the most realistic mom I've seen on television! She loves her kids, yet she is estranged from her ultra-conservative daughter Kitty, as both try to build bridges with one another. She blames others a lot and isn't always willing to acknowledge her own role in the family's problems, but she usually seeks to change when someone confronts her with something she's done wrong. She tends to nag, but that's what moms do, I guess! It shows that they care.

7. Pauline ("Posey") Benetto (Mitch Albom's For One More Day): This book was made into a movie in 2007, and it's about a man who was estranged from his mother, yet was blessed to spend one more day with her years after her death. Posey loved her son, even though he tended to prefer his father. When her son was a little boy, and the librarian only allowed him to check out children's books, she marched right into the library and told the librarian never to limit her son! She also tried to make a home for her kids after their father left them, as when she dressed up like Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.

8. Mrs. Kovic (Born on the Fourth of July): Born on the Fourth of July was an Oliver Stone movie about Vietnam veteran and anti-war activist, Ron Kovic. Kovic's mother had a sense of destiny about her son, presumably because he was born on the fourth of July. When the family was gathering around the television set watching JFK's inauguration, she said she had a dream in which her son was speaking before a lot of people, saying great things. She still faced challenges, though, especially when her son came back from Vietnam and was disrupting the family's life!

9. Hester Crane (Frasier): She was the mother of Frasier and Niles and the wife of Martin. She was a rather complex character. Her husband remembers her as someone who always looked for the best in people, and she accepted her gay friend in a time when homosexuality was a lot less accepted by society. Yet, she came across as cold and manipulative on Cheers, since she didn't care much for Diane, Frasier's fiancee. Maybe she was looking out for her son!

10. Lynette Scavo (Desperate Housewives): I think about this one story-line this season, in which Lynette is chatting with her son on the Internet, but he doesn't know that the person he's chatting with is his mother. He thinks it's a girl his own age! The two really bond, but he gets mad when he finds out that he was talking to his mother the whole time. After he leaves the room, his mom says that she'll miss the talks. Like a lot of moms, she enjoyed getting to know her son and learning about who he was as a person.

On that note, have a happy Mother's Day!