Reading Brian Robitaille’s May 11 opinion piece, “It’s her hands that I remember,” was like a breath of fresh, non-Trump derangement syndrome air from the Maine Sunday Telegram, whose editorial pages, like those of the Portland Press Herald, are so politically biased and relentless in their maligning of President Trump and his Cabinet.

Opinion’s front-page coverage of Mr. Robitaille’s Mother’s Day tribute to his late mother, Jeannine L. Robitaille, took me back in time to my own youth in Ellsworth in the 1950s and 1960s when motherhood and being a homemaker were enshrined vocational callings and full-time careers.

Mr. Robitaille’s prose reads like sheer poetry in his reminiscence of the comfort his mother’s hands never failed to give him and his siblings. His piece poignantly reminded me of what I had once read about the comfort and reassurance former First Lady Laura Bush received on the morning of 9/11 by calling her mother, Jenna Welch, and simply hearing her mother’s voice on the phone after the horrific attack against America.

The lows and disappointments in my own life were invariably tempered by hearing my own late mother Ann Rollins Black’s voice. Mr. Robitaille’s tribute to his mother and to motherhood at large should, once and for all, leave the pathetically ersatz term “birthing person” in the dust.

Albert Black
Ogunquit