By PATTIE MIHALIK

After attending a women’s conference and listening to the stories of some of the women, I reached a conclusion about mothers:

Mothers don’t get enough recognition for all they do.

When there’s a problem in the family, kids are more prone to hold the mother responsible, not their father.

Yes, I know. Listening to two dozen women come to those conclusions isn’t a large enough sampling to have meaning.

But we all judge things by our own personal experiences. My own regrettable experiences lead me to support what the women voiced: Mothers don’t get the respect they deserve.

I do have to confess that when several women started talking about their tendency of taking their mother for granted I was silent.

When they talked about regretting how they treated their mother I was also silent.

And when they admitted they always sided with their father even though it was Mom who did everything for them, I was really silent.

To tell the truth, I was overcome with shame and regret. Those women could have been talking about my own situation.

My mother was a saint — a woman who sacrificed everything for her children. I think I never told her enough times how I appreciated what she did.

When I was barely 10 and my little brother was not quite 3, my parents got a divorce.

I was devastated. They didn’t call me “daddy’s girl” for nothing. My dad and I were joined at the hip.

When he went to the movies, he took me. When he went to visit friends and family, he took me.

He was the one who taught me how to ride a bike and bait a fishing line.

Some of the best times of my life were spent with my dad bobbling along the bay in his little aluminum fishing boat. We talked for hours and I hung on to every word my dad said. I thought he was the smartest guy in the world.

Well, the smartest guy in the world wasn’t smart enough to treat his wife decently. He was a terrific father but a rotten husband.

I always understood why they got a divorce.

What I never understood was the poor circumstances in which he left his wife and children. He moved to another part of the state and quickly married again. He never gave my mother one red cent for support.

There she was, with only a grade-school education and no job experience, trying to support my brother and me. She worked day and night at two jobs — in a sewing factory during the day then as a waitress at night. She often got home after midnight then had to be at work in the factory early the next morning.

I never gave her credit for all that because I wasn’t a smart enough kid to notice how much she was sacrificing.

Yet, when my father mailed me a card with a $5 bill in it, I ran around saying, “Look what my father gave me.”

Mom would retort by saying, “I’m the one who supports you, pays the rent and puts food on the table.”

It wasn’t until I was grown with children of my own that I understood the sacrifices she made. I understood, too, that I never gave her the credit she deserved.

I once told her I was sorry for the hard time I gave her when I was growing up.

She said, “What are you talking about? You never gave me a hard time in your life.”

My mother was really special. My biggest regret is that I never told her all the ways I admired her.

I never would have admitted any of this to the women at the conference because it hurt too much to get the words out.

So I sat there and listened to other women tell similar stories. One woman said when she pictures her childhood, all she can picture is how mean her mother was to her. Her mother was the one who set limits and insisted on a standard of behavior. So she and her mother often clashed.

Her father, on the other hand, never gave her a hard time about anything. She thought he was the understanding one. When she had her own children she realized her dad wasn’t understanding. He was absent as a parent.

“Why don’t we understand these things when we’re young?” she asked.

Another woman who was also a child of divorce said she always blamed her mother for the breakup of the marriage, even though it was her dad who was unfaithful.

She figured that, too, might have been her mother’s fault.

Of course she understood more when she was older with her own marriage and children.

I know there are tons of adult children who revered their mother and lavished on mom the love she deserved.

I envy them. When I talk to God I ask him to tell my mother in heaven how much I cherish her … how much I revere her.

Wouldn’t it have been nice if I said all that when she was here to hear it?

If you are lucky enough to still have your mother, don’t miss the chance to tell her how much you love her.

Moms should be honored every day — not just on Mother’s Day.

Contact Pattie Mihalik at newsgirl@comcast.net.