As a hustling 21-year-old from the mean streets of Las Milpas in South Pharr, I can't forget the person who taught me how to fight.

Growing up, we could find a fight around every corner. Luckily, I talked my way out of most of them, or ran from others.

You see, I learned that ''brain'' was often better than ''brawn'' to settle disputes.

After all, you get suspended from school for fighting.

Yep, I learned how to fight and developed a passion for writing and a thirst for knowledge, all because of this person.

Happy Mother's Day, mom.

In this mostly macho Mexican-American culture of ours, I may be committing a sin here, but que me lleve la muerte if I ever forget my mother's love.

First, there's her name. Of all the beautiful Latina names -- like Esperanza (hope), Rosa (rose), Guadalupe and Ang‚lica -- one stands religiously above the others.

Mar¡a ... ''Ave Maria, llena de gracia. Hail Mary, full of grace.

My father, like Lou Gehrig before him, must be the luckiest man alive.

Sure, my mother spent her time in the kitchen the way some silly tradition demanded for women of her generation, flipping tortillas over a gas stove, chorizo sizzling in the frying pan Saturday mornings before cartoons and barbacoa or menudo steaming on Sunday after church. But she also worked, like many women today.

We ate together like a nuclear family, elbows off the table, WITH THE TV OFF.

''What did you do at school today?'' started every conversation. Then we would berate local city officials for promising to give our colonia ''this and that,'' only to snub our community once again.

''How long are people going to stand for this?'' my mother often said.

My mother is strong; she doesn't take guff from anybody. She once beat up a Hell's Angel wife when bikers held my family at knife-point in Indiana. That is one tough woman.

Heck, she once sported a beehive hairdo. Talk about being headstrong.

When one of my elementary teachers wouldn't let us have school parties like everyone else, my mother was the first one talking to the principal.

And she loved to bake cookies.

But it's the little things my mother sacrificed that made her a good parent. When money was tight, she gave up smoking because her habit was not healthy around children and cost too much.

Even as I was being praised by teachers for being a good student, my mother went back to school and got her GED.

Education is what she and my father believe in most.

''Go with your father to get the newspaper,'' she often said to me after school, back when The Monitor was an evening paper.

''Let's go to the library.''

''Did you vote?''

Even to this day, I can't get her little rhymes out of my head.

''Good. Better. Best. Never let it rest, 'til your good is better and your better best.''

''A man works from sun to sun, but a woman's work is never done.''

Men wear the pants in the family, right? ''Yeah, but I tell your father which pants to wear,'' my mom joked.

In a world that makes it increasingly difficult for marriages to survive, my parents, especially my mother, found time to listen and fight for their children.

On this Mother's Day, I can turn to look at my mother, still at the stove, and truly understand the meaning of the prayer: Llena de gracia, full of grace.

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