(I wrote this last year on Mother’s Day.  I decided to repost it this year.  And, yes, her Dad is still with us).

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There’s a scene near the beginning of Tomorrow Never Dies where James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) is taking on way too many bad guys, and he is about to do the impossible.  M (Judi Dench) and others are watching on a video screen, and an Admiral says, in a moment of panic, “What the hell is he doing?” and M says “His job!”

I think of that line often.  The world is filled with people who do their jobs every day, pretty well.  And others,…  not so well.

And today, I want to tell you about the person who does the best job of doing her job that I have ever seen.

Her name is Jeannie Mayeux.  We’ve been married since 1971, and though there have been some stretches of time when I did not do my job very well in this family, she has been faithful to her task for a lifetime.

For the last year and a half, she has been a wonder to behold.  We read these “phrases,” like “the sandwich generation.”  Well, she is living it.  Her dad moved in with us about a year and a half ago, and every day, without exception, she takes his blood sugar and his blood pressure, multiple times every day, injecting him with insulin multiple times a day, watching his blood sugar carefully, preparing every meal to the calorie and ingredient, so that he can be ok.  And every meal is ready, and wonderful, like clockwork.

And, the last two weeks, she drove to San Antonio to help our son and daughter-in-law adjust to the new routine of a new baby along with her two-year-old sister.  Our oldest son is in Medical School; it was finals week.  He needed his mom, and two precious little girls needed their grandmother.  And Jeannie showed up, as she always does.

She gets no “breaks.”  She just keeps doing her job.

She has worked outside the home at times through the years, and done those jobs with her same sense of dedication and thoroughness.  (She is thorough!)  But her real job has always been that of the mother, in the very best sense of that word.

When Evan, our youngest son, got serious about baseball, Jeannie went out and bought a tackle box and created her own thoroughly planned, always well-stocked first aid kit.  By the second week (and up through Evan’s high school years), other moms just knew when their own sons needed attention, “oh, go see Evan’s mom with her first aid kit.”

By his third year of baseball, she bought a new, larger first aid kit – about the size of an aircraft carrier.  The boys were getting bigger, and the cuts and scrapes just a little more intimidating.  Jeannie was always ready.

When I sent her to Israel for six weeks on an archeological dig, she was a touch older than the college students making up the majority of workers.  As she told me the stories, it was pretty clear that she soon was recognized as the group mom.

Understand, she never “volunteers” for these assignments.  She just does them.  She just “is” that person.  And people recognize it pretty quickly.

When she was gone these last two weeks, her sister and I did get her Dad’s vitals taken, and the food on the table.  But, especially when it was my turn, there was a noticeable lack of elegance.  There is never such a lack when Jeannie is around.

A lot is happening in our family.  It takes a full-time+ mom to keep it going well.  And she is always there…

What is she doing?  Her job.  And she is simply the best at her job that I have ever seen anywhere.