What better way to participate in this week's HubMob than to honor my Hubber Mom, Donna Campbell Smith, with a Hub!

Mama, (and HubPages!), please don't hold it against me if this hub is short - I'm still typing with one hand!

I broke my arm a couple of weeks ago, and my mom has been helping take care of me. She took me for my follow-up visit today, ten days after my surgery, and she was there to hear the good news first - I have a removable brace and can wash my arm tomorrow!

But this isn't supposed to be about me...although that's what's great about a great mom, letting us kids be kinda selfish now and then :-)

My mom is talented. She hasn't given herself enough credit for her artistic abilities, which skipped a generation and landed on my daughter. ( I can't draw a straight line!) I'm privileged to have her original artwork decorating my home. Her oil paintings, water colors and pen and ink sketches captured moments from our home town and remind me of my childhood.

But Mama has largely given up the brush for the pen....or, er, the keyboard. I was going to be a writer when I grew up, but Mama is the one who actually followed through - starting with poems traded for copies in literary journals and advancing to nice chunks of change for articles in well-read magazines. She now has five published books, and she beat me to the first Adsense payout here on HubPages. In fact she will likely have her second Google check before I have my first!

Mama has a special way with horses, and with kids, and with the combination of horses and kids. She was the leader of my 4H Horse Club when I was growing up. She only recently "retired" from the horse business, though I'm sure her days of teaching kids to ride are not over.

And finally, Mama is a survivor. I've seen her struggle (neither writers nor equestrian professionals make a lot of money - the intangible rewards are more meaningful, I suppose) and grieve (she's lost her mother, her father, her sister, and she's not only divorced but saw two of her daughters' marriages fail). But she keeps on keeping on, and in the process, she inspires others to do the same.