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Happy Mother’s Day! I have two wonderful reasons to enjoy this holiday: my wife, the mother of my son; and my mother, the mother of me. Here’s hoping that you can find a like cause to celebrate the day.

And now its time for the obligatory “MotherOde.” Let me tell you a little about my mom.

My mother is Japanese by virtue of birth and an American citizen by virtue of growing up on the island of Guam. As a result, she speaks fluent Chamorro (a Polynesian homogeny of Japanese, Spanish, and French) and almost-perfect English. She also knows enough Japanese to find a restroom, which is more than most Americans can accomplish without socially embarrassing gestures.

Mom comes from a family of eleven children. That’s right - eleven. The island of Guam is a bastion of Spanish Catholicism, which means that everyone loves big families, and the big families love to get together and arrange marriages to have even bigger families. Think My Big Fat Greek Wedding, move the nationality a few thousand miles to the west, change the religion to one with fewer icons and more popes, add soy sauce, and you’ll get the picture. This phenomenon of culturally-driven reproduction has gifted me with over 45 first cousins on my mother’s side alone. By contrast, I have one child. The extended family considers me to be a heretic of the highest order.

My parents first met while my father, a US Navy seaman, was stationed on Guam. They went on a seemingly low number of dates (legend places this number at two) and were always accompanied by several of the brothers and sisters (this family gives new meaning to the word “togetherness”). Dad then shipped out to Great Lakes, USA and wrote letters to her for two years. He proposed to her in the mail, and she accepted. Everyone say “AWWW.”

Dad came back to Guam, married Mom, and took her away to the United States. Because of the cost of air travel, it was ten years before she had a chance to visit her home once more. If she ever resented this financially-forced exile, she never let on. For all my siblings and I could tell, Mom was perfectly happy as an adopted Oklahoman.

How did your mother punish you? I know this is an unusual topic to discuss, especially on Mother’s Day, but I am very grateful for the way my mother disciplined me. My mother wasn’t a spanker, although she did it when necessary. My mother wasn’t a grounder, which wouldn’t have worked on someone as imaginative as I.

My mother was a lecturer.

I don’t mean to say that she lectured me occasionally — heck, every mother does that. No, my mother was a Lecturer. She was capable of oratory that would put Cotton Mather to shame. She could lecture for long periods of time — two hours was not unusual — and she never reused material, figuring out new ways to make me feel sorry not only for the things I did, but also the things I wouldn’t get around to doing until next week. When Mom said, “Wait until your Father gets home,” that wasn’t a threat — it was the glimmer of hope on the horizon. Although the arrival of my Dad usually meant a spanking, it also meant the lecture would be over. For that, I would have endured a Biblical flogging.

My mother has an accent, although I have to listen carefully to hear it. It will occasionally lead to some humorous malapropisms, especially during the dreaded lectures. In one instance, my mother meant to say, “Don’t give me any of that crap.” It came out as “Don’t give me any of that crab.” Being old enough to know better (age 9) I kept the grin off my face. My kid brother, ever the impulsive one, smirked “Do you want lobster instead?” That earned both of us another hour on the lecture circuit (yes, both of us. In Japanese families, the eldest brother is responsible for the actions of his siblings, That’s why my brother has more balls than I do — he would write the figurative hot checks and I would pay them).

One side benefit of growing up with Mom’s odd take on the Queen’s English is that I can understand Asian-accented English, no matter how crude the attempt. This has come in handy at Vietnamese markets and in meetings with third-party software vendors.

Mom loves a good joke, although there are times that more prurient forms of humor escape her reasoning. On more than one occasion, Mom graced our dinner table with the repetition of a joke she heard at work, the contents of which she clearly failed to understand completely. Our household was very “clean”, without so much as an episode of “Three’s Company” to pollute our young minds, so these occasional utterances from my mother were as if Jesus Himself had come down and done a Richard Pryor monologue. Again, these situations would find me valiantly maintaining the stone face while my brother rolled under the table laughing his head off.

Mom has always supported my ambitions. She has always defended my actions in public, even when she questioned or disagreed with them in private. She is always trying to do something nice for me; I am convinced that, on her last day, she will refuse to go to her deathbed until she’s had a chance to make me something to eat.

Mom loves my wife as she does her own daughters. This act alone makes up for any lecture I ever endured.

My relationship with my mother has only one downside — where her grandson (my son) is concerned, the lecture tour appears to have come to a halt. She has succumbed to the lure of grandmotherliness, a disease that convinces elderly people that their grandchildren can do no wrong. Somehow, I feel as if my son is benefiting from all the doubt that should have rightfully been mine. But then that’s what grandparents do, isn’t it?

In my own crude and halting way, I try to emulate my mother’s long-winded ways when disciplining my son. Unfortunately, my work cannot compare to that of the master, with my best efforts resembling those of a mere dilettante. It seems my son will never gain the benefit of a stern, four-hour hair curling lecture in accented English. I say it’s his loss, although I’ll bet he wouldn’t agree.

Too bad. This time, I would be the one making the lobster jokes.