I was what you might call a mama's boy. I took a fair amount of ribbing from my brothers and sisters and the other kids at school but the solace she offered was more than adequate. I wouldn't find out until years later that she was teaching me to be sensitive and putting me in touch with my feminine side.

Mother always knows best and whatever taunting I endured, as a child, would be avenged mightily with the onset of puberty. Grown up chicks dig the sensitivity thing and mom's nurturing paid off in spades. For every woman that is moved by machismo there are three dozen more who groove on tenderness. By the time I went off to college I was as busy as a sailor on shore leave.

It's a shame that traits like empathy and compassion are identified as gender specific in our society. When a car struck my friend Tommy's dog, I sobbed enough for everyone involved. I was with him when he picked up the lifeless, broken body of his best friend and I guided him home through the blur of his own tears.

Tommy's father was indelicate at best when he stuffed the puppy's remains into the Hefty garbage bag and told my little friend to take it like a man.

"Only girls cry, little soldier, just get over it."

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I know it was a beautiful sunny morning when she left because I remember burning my bare feet on the hot tar driveway. The world seemed a cruel place to me as a child but she had always been there to calm and pacify. At the ripe old age of seven my greatest fear in life was realized as I hopped on the hot pavement and watched my mother back the station wagon out of the driveway for good.

It was my habit to throw a screaming tantrum if she so much as went to the grocery store without me. I'd wail and plead until she'd abandon the trip altogether or agree to take me along. When my mother told me she was leaving forever, my blubbering display was epic and I nearly drowned in tears and snot.

She couldn't be serious, surely she'd change her mind at the bottom of the driveway. I notched up the volume a little as my mom backed the car into the street and drove away.

My bawling abruptly ceased when her car turned the corner because I knew that there was nobody there to hear. The tears weren't flowing any longer because I hadn't any left. I stood completely still on the hot tar and let it do its worst to my naked feet.

Pain is an illusory concept, as anyone with paralysis can readily demonstrate. A person who has lost the use of his arms or legs will not wince if the nail clipper misses its mark. Our perception of pain is the result of tiny electrical impulses in our brain and nothing more. Pain is an idea.

The searing discomfort on the bottom of my feet distracted me from my mother's departure and I reveled in it. I explored the sensation like a disinterested observer as the burning intensified. After ten minutes or so I could no longer distinguish that particular discomfort from any other and I was able to stand without flinching.

Eventually I felt nothing at all.

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We played a card game called "Up and down the river," whenever she'd come for a visit. She brought strawberry flavored Nestle's Quick and told me that, since I was a big boy, I could mix it up myself while she waited outside on the steps. I have lovely memories of those card games on the front stoop in the summer sun but they are bittersweet. As an adult I understand that we played cards outside because of her reticence to enter the house she had shared with my father.

Up and down the river is a great game for kids because it teaches counting skills and the joys of gambling. Two rows of ten cards each are laid face down, end to end, comprising the river. Five more cards are turned face up in front of the dealer. The dealer then asks the player to determine his own fate.

"Which side of the river would you like?"

The player chooses which row of ten cards to start with.

"Do you want to go up or down the river?"

The player decides on which end of that row to begin.

"Do you want to pay first or get paid?"

There's the rub. The first card in each row is worth a penny; the second two cents and so on until you reach the tenth card, which is worth a dime. The cards are turned one at a time in the chosen row; if a card matches one of the up cards in front of the dealer, payment is made according to its position.

The game is life in microcosm. The position of the cards may be static and irrevocable but our fate isn't. In the game, as in life, you may hope for the turn of a friendly card but you, yourself, choose which one to turn. We determine which side of the river to row, where to begin our journey and most importantly, whether we want the bad news or the good news first.

The serious player will always opt to bleed first and get it over with. My mother played exactly as I did, invariably preferring to pay her dues on the way upriver and hope for the best on the way back down.

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I could catalogue a thousand lessons I'd not have learned and a depth of feeling I'd never know without the dissolution of our little family. Pain has its limits and a thick skin can go an awful long way. My mother taught me to accept adversity with the quiet assurance that one day I'd get paid.

I wouldn't disparage my father, he's a most righteous cat but my mother was finally free to seek the adoring husband she deserved. She and my stepfather found their happy place aboard a houseboat on the St. Croix River and I shared their scene every summer.

Payback for me came in the form of an idyllic, barefooted, Huckleberry Finn childhood along the banks of that beautiful river and I'm forever in her debt.