Like millions of others, on Sunday, Mother’s Day, I will remember my own mother.

Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on May 22. 1929, she grew up in Oroville, Wash., one of four children of an apple orchard owner and his wife. She died at home in Auburn of cancer on May 21, 2006.

Between those poles, Irene Whale lived a good life, had six children (wanted eight) and enjoyed a passel of grandchildren.

As the years since her death continue to bank up, what strikes me more and more is how complex she was.

And I wonder at her many funny quirks, her dichotomies, her stories and the side of my mother, now past all knowing.

Things I once could have chatted with her about over lunch or a cup of coffee.

Some things my mother kept to herself, and that makes it harder to write about her than of my father. Where he was effusive, emotional, and on the surface, she knew how to fold herself up as quickly and neatly as a tortilla.

The “do not tread” signs were kindly put up, but they were firm. As she once told my sister, Carole, when she was a little kid: “Look, I’m your mother, I’m not your friend.”

Oh, but she wasn’t stodgy, in fact she was always ready to join in the fun.

Like all of her children, I will never forget hilarious games of Pit that we thought had ended for the evening, only to hear her “hee hee hee” in the next room, which knocked us over again with fresh gusts of laughter.

She certainly had her own take on “momolies”, that cache of sayings peculiar to mothers everywhere.

“What’s for dinner, mom?” we would ask. “Oh, slop doodle,” she’d say.

“What’s for dinner, mom?” “Poison ickies,” came the answer.

She was afraid of putting records on the turntable, so she asked that I do it for her. She never explained that one.

She could also be fierce, when occasion demanded it.

My father described and always with amusement, facing the music for something he’d done once that angered her.

“You know, I feel that I have had a knife in my back for the last two months,” he at last told her.

“Yes,” she snapped, “and I put it there!”

I don’t think my father really understood the being he’d married and was a bit at a loss when the large soul beneath the skin surfaced.

“Shh, there goes Nurse Whale,” he’d say to me in hushed tones, as we watched her walk out the door in her nurses garb to begin the drive to work. His tone spoke of the difference he perceived between his wife and the top flight, on-the-ball nurse she transformed into. The awe was genuine.

“Your mother …,” he would say, trailing off.

When her father was dying, she wrote (her father) to let him know what was happening to him. My father showed me the letter, so beautifully written, so lucid, that all he could say, shaking his head in admiration was, “I could never have written a letter like that.”

He meant it.

I see now that in her living years I was too wrapped up in my own issues to extend the invitation. “Hey, mom, let’s go have a treat.”

“Hey mom, how about a cup of coffee?”

A simple cup of coffee at Starbucks recently cost $2.50. Today, however, all of the accumulated wealth, the total value of everything that ever was, is, or ever will be in this world or in all possible worlds and universes cannot buy that simple cup of coffee.

Mamas don’t live forever. And if you’re lucky enough to have one still, do something nice for her Sunday.

Reach Robert Whale at rwhale@auburn-reporter.com, or 253-833-0218, ext. 5052.