My mom passed on Dec. 2 at the age of 78.

While cleaning out her house to get it ready to go on the market, my wife came across this column I had written when I worked for the Arab Tribune. It is dated June 12, 1985:

If I never, ever go on another fishing excursion again as long as I live, I’ll be happy.

The best possible excursion, not trip, I’ve ever been on happened on a recent Sunday. My mother and I barely escaped for an hour that day to hit a very small pond on a farm where we probably shouldn’t have been.

Nobody saw us though and I convinced her we were safe because of my presumed association with the owner.

Since Christmas she’s had loads of new fishing equipment that has never been put to the test so I insisted that we get away to try it out.

It was the most enjoyable hour I’ve spent in a very long time and for a good reason. Starting with my junior year in high school, my mother and I lived in an apartment by ourselves.

But since then we’ve barely spent any time together at all. During those three years together we had it rough at times, we fought now and again, but we always made it through.

I was enduring the growing pains of any normal 16-year-old trying to stay in school, find out about myself and trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my future.

She was a recently divorced 44-year-old woman trying to make ends meet with her job, adjusting to a new role in society and trying to keep her head, as well as mine, above water.

She paid the bills and kept our bellies full (which is a chore in itself) and we always helped each other out in tight situations. She let me have a couple of her old cars on the terms “pay me when you can.”

And before my sister calls and complains thinking she missed out on a freebie, I paid her back both times, dear.

I did my part also. One day her car wouldn’t crank. The battery. She was upset because payday was a week and a half away, but she had to get to work every day until then. She was also upset because she’d have to be seen in my ’65 Chevy.

At the service station where I worked for Mr. Hill, a kindly but impatient man to work for, let her have the battery and took it out of my next pay check.

It happened again when her tires were running on air. Mr. Hill let me pay for one tire a week, but gave us the whole set at once.

We made a cooperative effort to make it and she’s one of the reasons I’m such a hardhead and never give up on too many situations. She really knew how to roll with the punches and still does.

School was my nemesis, always has been. She wouldn’t have any of that.

“All my kids will finish high school if I have to quit my job and go to class with you every day,” I’ve heard her say countless times. “What you do after that is your business.”

She stood by that, too. In the sixth grade I decided it was time to loaf around. I was tired of school anyway.

When I made ‘F’s’ in science and reading for the first six weeks, she hit the roof. The next day when I wandered in science and reading classes, there she sat. School suddenly became more important to me.

Of late, though, we’ve missed out on each other. We haven’t grown apart. We were as close as ever, we just couldn’t see each other. My first year away at school she remarried, and at the end of my last year I got married. Since then we’ve just had other commitments that come first.

Until that Sunday fishing excursion. We hadn’t been to see her in a while and probably couldn’t make it down before she zoomed off to Paris last weekend. She made a point to come see us just as she made a point to attend those sixth grade classes.

It was sweltering at 2 in the afternoon but we didn’t care. We came to catch at least one fish.

The pond has, at most, 10-15 catfish in the one-to five-pound range. They were used to being fed so one swam right up to the bank in about a half a foot of water to swish its whiskers at us.

“Look, look,” she screamed like a kid at a petting zoo. “He’s coming right up here to us.”

To make certain we’d catch them I used fish pellets on bream hooks for bait. We’d then throw out a handful and float our hook in the middle of them. We knew there wasn’t much time so we baited up and threw as soon as possible.

Our first catch was the world’s smallest bream.

Finally, after 30 minutes of trying to get one of the big ‘uns to hit, one did. It was like a Chinese fire drill.

The brand new reel’s drag was set on the lowest possible setting. So low that even when the line got tangled in the top eye it wouldn’t budge it.

When it hit it ran the line out with ease. To land it, I had to pull it in by grabbing the line with my hand between the last eye on the rod and the reel. She’d pull in the excess and we finally got our prize to the bank.

A good four- or five-pounder, I asked for a stringer to put it on. She said she didn’t have one but upon looking in the new tackle box for the first time she discovered one.

Even using the fish pellets that was all the luck we had in an hour’s time. We just couldn’t coordinate or efforts to be in the place they were hitting the floating pellets at the same time.

One reason was her hardheadedness (is there such a word?). She wanted to learn how to cast her new toy and insisted on doing it all by herself every time.

It didn’t matter. I’d been just as happy if we hadn’t gotten a nibble all day.

I thought I was the luckiest person in the world. For the first time in a long time I got one uninterrupted hour with one hardheaded lady.

My mother.

(We all miss you, momma.)