I'm proud of my mother. She is intrepid. She watches C-Span broadcasts of boring Senate meetings, and she cares.

She doesn't think we should "change horses in mid-stream."

She's afraid of the terrorists.

I don't agree with her, and I can't reason with her. If I try, she says, "I don't want to talk about it. It makes me mad."

Fair enough. It's hard to shove her around.

But on some issues--amazingly--she is very liberal and understanding and intuitive. For example, she doesn't understand all the fuss about gay marriages.

When I was a child, I got into a long diatribe with a fundamentalist preacher who just happened to be teaching my 7th-grade geography class. I had brought a library book on evolution into the classroom, and he began trying to set me straight.

Because of my mother, I was able to hold my ground, even though he was letting me know I was going the wrong way, and that I'd be sorry.

I never will forget talking with my mother that night after school.

"My teacher said this and this about the Bible being against evolution," I told her.

And she said (so like her) something that has stayed with me all these years, so powerful was it:

"What do YOU think?"