My mother would have made a terrific spy. She couldn't keep a secret to save her life, but she had a pain threshold so high she could have been a judge on "American Idol, Best of Sanjaya."

When she crushed her fingers in the garage door, she waited three days before going to the hospital to have the broken bones set. Days after she had a King Kong-size bite taken out of her thigh when she collided with a dock while waterskiing, she limped onto the tennis court for a match in a club tournament -- an achievement that would not be equaled in the eyes of her friends until many years later, when Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling won Game 6 of the American League championship series against the Yankees in 2004, despite a ruptured tendon in his right ankle and a leaking Magic Marker in his sock. (OK, Red Sox Nation, that was a joke. I know it was real blood.)

And when she was dying of lung cancer and enduring esophageal radiation and chemotherapy and some bizarre procedure in which she had acid injected into her lungs and then was turned on her bed as if she were a rotisserie chicken, she continued to insist her oncologist bring her cookies. Even near death, the woman never lost her interest in chocolate.

Now, my mother took enormous pride in her stoicism. She knew both that she was a rock and that the males who surrounded her -- her husband and two sons -- were complete weenies by comparison. When I was 6 years old and went flying over my bicycle and knocked out my front teeth, she observed, "Why couldn't you have broken your arm? Blue Cross would have paid for that!" My brother and I usually had to have bone poking through skin before we were allowed to stay home from school.

But her remarkable pain threshold served us well, too. Certainly it helped me: It's pretty likely that I would not have survived my childhood if she weren't such a fierce mother lion and so reflexively fearless. The stories of the ways I inadvertently came close to killing myself as a kid are legion in my family, but they include the following moments:

When I was a toddler, I threw myself over the railing that separated the second floor of our house from the first -- and from the stairway that descended down into the basement. My mother made a dive into that stairwell, so that instead of landing on the stairs a story and a half below me, I landed on her. She was in bed for a week.

When I was 3, I had one of those metal firetrucks in which small children can sit and pedal. One day, I decided to disregard the rule that I wasn't supposed to drive down our steep driveway and into the street. I did. Or, to be precise, I tried. But my mother dove once again, grabbed the back of the truck, and pulled me to a stop feet before the truck would have reached the road and been mashed by an oncoming car. Her knees, I gather, could have been filmed for close-ups in a driver's-ed movie after this little maneuver.

Now, do either of these tales suggest that my mother was in the slightest way unique as a mom? Actually, they don't. My sense is that most mothers would have launched themselves headfirst to catch their children as they jumped from balconies or tried to pedal their firetrucks into oncoming traffic. Moreover, as extraordinary as my mother's pain threshold was, it wasn't unique among mothers. Let's face it: To even wear the mantle of mom a woman has to go through that little rite of passage we call childbirth.

And that's probably why a day like Mother's Day matters. Yes, the premise is more than a little schmaltzy, and the rituals that surround it a little syrupy for my taste. But the reality is that there is nonetheless something completely remarkable about the selflessness of a mom.

Happy Mother's Day.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on May 13, 2007.)

After Vermont was pummeled with snow April 15, we all looked longingly for signs of spring. Well, it came -- along with mud, tulips with a death wish, and my neighbor's cat, Jack, who would spray a living grizzly bear if he saw one -- and now we can start appreciating the signs of summer.

Actually, Jack was hanging around our house even when it was winter. The guy is a feline fire hose.

In any case, one of my favorite signs of summer occurs next Saturday, when Lincoln holds its annual townwide yard sale. Hundreds of shoppers will descend upon the village here in Addison County, many as early as 9 a.m., for a daylong shopping spree. (Jack will spray some of the shoppers, too, but that's another story.) As many as 40 families will hold yard sales, in addition to the tables of books and plants and used toasters that will be set up on the grounds of the Lincoln Library.

Maps with the locations of the sales are available at the Lincoln Store. I would provide directions to the library and the store, but Lincoln is small. If you arrive in the village and can't find these two structures, you probably shouldn't be allowed to operate heavy machinery or handle a disposable razor.

Now, it's not the stuff that's for sale that makes me savor the day. When my daughter was little, we used to wander from yard to yard together and search out Barbies, but other than dolls that looked like Paris Hilton (and were, apparently, about as smart), we didn't buy much. My daughter once spent a quarter on a wallet she never used and a dime on a candle she never burned. Once she wanted to buy a drinking glass that she liked, but it had calcified brown crud on the bottom and the sellers simply gave it to her. My hope is that none of us have ever drunk from that glass accidentally.

One year, however, my family made an exception and spent serious money: A decade ago, my wife and I bought two easy chairs for $10. She had them reupholstered, and they still look pretty jazzy. Other than that, however, I don't think I've spent more than $25 at the Town Wide Yard Sale in my entire life -- though, in all fairness, that is 25 more dollars than I have spent at all other yard sales on the planet combined.

The reality is that most things that are sold at yard sales are sold for a reason. No one wants them. Moreover, if you live in Lincoln and you aren't careful, you might very well buy something in 2007 that you sold in 2003. It's not just bottles and cans we recycle here.

And this year, of course, there is the added risk that every single item for sale will have been sprayed by a four-legged pumper filled with ammonia named Jack. (Coming soon to a movie theater near you, the science fiction saga of a cyborg cat from the future, "The Urinator.")

But then there are those nuggets of gold which, if you look carefully enough, you might discover. The easy chairs in our living room are an example.

Nevertheless, I am sincere when I tell you that it isn't the hunt for the perfect blanket chest that makes the afternoon so worthwhile. It's the reality that the day is a village-wide block party. Everyone who hasn't already emerged from hibernation is out. My neighbor Robert Fuller -- a chef who just happens to own Pauline's, Leunig's and the Bobcat Cafe -- is preparing crepes in his driveway on Creamery Street. Vaneasa Stearns and her General Store will be selling cookies they baked that morning, as well as all manner of soups and wraps.

Suddenly, even if the weather is brisk, the crowds are good-natured, and we all welcome in summer. And you just don't know what treasures await.

One warning: If you do visit us next Saturday and see a friendly, gray tiger stripe cat wandering around, pet him only if you've just purchased a raincoat.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on May 20, 2007.)

It's only a matter of time before someone is killed by an alarm clock. You think I'm kidding, but as scary as it is out there (just for the record, I've never been quite sure where "there" is), it's getting even scarier in bedrooms with alarm clocks -- which is, of course, a sizable percentage of the bedrooms in this country. For all I know, it may include every single bedroom we have except for that of a fellow whose name escapes me, but who lived in the same dormitory as me our senior year of college. He lived in the suite next door and was famous for sleeping through his afternoon classes.

In any case, as we work harder and sleep less, we are growing increasingly dependent upon alarm clocks.

It is also, apparently, getting more and more difficult for the old-fashioned alarm clock to roust us from our beds. My wife came across three products while traveling recently that suggest it's becoming common for us all to turn off our snooze alarms and grab another six or seven hours of shut-eye.

First of all, in a Skymall catalog on an airplane, she came across the Hammacher Schlemmer Flying Alarm Clock. This little item launches a rotor into the air that wings its way around the bedroom until the sleeper climbs out of bed, catches it and returns it to the alarm base. Meanwhile, the alarm is ringing.

Then in an issue of Lucky magazine, she read about the Nanda Clocky alarm clock. Incidentally, Lucky is the only magazine on the planet that has the courtesy to inform its readers upfront that it is about absolutely nothing but consumption: Buying stuff because stuff is love. Anyway, the Nanda Clocky is sold at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, and jumps down from pedestals up to 24 inches high, where it will then proceed to run around your bedroom until you catch it and kill it -- excuse me, until you catch it and turn it off.

Finally, she found the Sonic Boom alarm clock. This dandy device was designed for those among us who are seriously morning-challenged: I presume that the name of the clock hints at its sound (ca-boom!), especially since the product includes a "vibrating bed shaker." (Note I did not write that it includes a vibrator that will make you shake in your bed, which would probably get me fired.)

So, here we have an alarm clock that sends a rotor flying about your bedroom, an alarm clock that races like a rodent under your feet, and an alarm clock that is evidently powerful enough to shake your mattress.

Frankly, I'm impressed. There have been times in my life when I could have used all three of them. One weekend morning when I was in college, my roommates claimed that I pushed the snooze alarm beside my bed every 10 minutes for close to three hours. Unfortunately, we all had separate bedrooms in the suite, and my door was locked, and so they couldn't simply turn off the clock, drag me from the bed, and find a new, more considerate roommate.

Nevertheless, the trend here is, well, alarming. Given our tendency these days to burn the candle at both ends -- to work hard, to play hard, and to sleep as little as possible -- it is only a matter of time before we need alarms that behave about as badly as possible. I'm not a product innovator, but I wouldn't be surprised if someday soon we have alarms that smolder so they set off our smoke alarms (the Fire Alarm), shriek that the end of the world is nearing (the False Alarm), and murmur over and over in a nasally voice, "That's hot," (the Annoying Celebrity Socialite Alarm).

Certainly that last one would get me out of bed ... but only so I could prove that (Warning: Old Joke Ahead!) time flies by hurling the clock out the window.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on May 27, 2007.)