Mother’s Day will be celebrated this Sunday and all across the United States we will be either remembering or honoring our mothers. We will do so by being by her side in church if that is her wish or we will be choosing other ways to let her know just how much we love her.

Money is not the best way to show a mother the love that she has earned but the National Retail Federation estimates that $21 billion will be spent this weekend on the woman who rocked our cradles. Is that not an amazing amount of dough? That comes to about $170 per mother. Sorry, Mom, your card won’t cost that much!

The Mother of the Year will be proclaimed from many different outlets. Magazines, newspapers, television shows will all have their ideas as to who might be the Mother of the Year.

One of the most popular suggestions this year is Toya Graham. Don’t know her? Sure you do. She is that mother in Baltimore who saw her son in the middle of all that mess and disregarded the danger of the moment. She bulled her way into that crowd and, as we used to say, “jerked a knot in his backside” and took him home.

Ms. Graham was applauded by many and reproached by almost as many. I will leave it up to you as to how you feel, but I would not want to get on the bad side of Toya Graham.

An entirely different set of circumstances might lead us in another direction as to the appellation Mother of the Year. Like all the way across the pond, a.k.a. as the Atlantic Ocean.

Instead of Toya, the name is Catherine or Kate, for short. Catherine is the Duchess of Cambridge, the wife of Prince William who one day may be the King of England.

Toya’s son’s name is Michael, while Catherine’s newborn daughter is Charlotte Elizabeth Diana. They live on the same earth, but in different universes so to speak. They have immensely different household budgets, but both are receiving quite a bit of press for Mother of the Year.

It would seem that a standard set of rules might be appropriate for the award, but the fact is that there is no square box into which we might place a definition of mother. There is no standard color or size for the position.

You’ve probably heard this but it’s a good one. A young boy went into a department store, like our Belk Store, and walked to the lingerie section to buy his mother a slip for Mother’s Day. He needed help and someone came to his aid.

“What size?” the clerk asked.

“She’s perfect,” the little boy answered. The clerk chose a size 34, wrapped it and sent the proud boy home with his gift.

A few days later, the mother came in to exchange the slip for one that fit better. She needed a size 52! In her son’s eyes she was perfect and she was. We all have heard the saying “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

Toya Graham may not be your cup of tea when it comes to Mother of the Year. Neither would Princess Kate. I would choose neither of those.

My vote for Mother of the Year is….drum roll, please…my own! I agree with the little boy. She’s perfect.