Flowers and chocolates are nice. Here’s something nicer for mom.

If you’re celebrating Mother’s Day today, are you getting your mom flowers?

Probably so.

Odds are, if you live in Charlotte, you come from someplace else. Your mother probably still lives in that someplace.

She has enough pictures of the grandkids on her phone.

She’s not eating those chocolates you send her, even if they came from the fancy place.

Flowers are convenient. Flowers are nice. But there’s something even nicer you can do for Mom today.

When you call her – and you will call her, right? – ask her about the day you were born.

It’s one of the dwindling number of things that still very much belong to mothers.

That’s actually a good trend. It’s the product of dads participating more in their families, doing the lunch packing, the carpool lane, the fretted trip to the doctor.

But the birth, well, this is Mom’s territory.

If you’re of a certain age, there’s a chance your father wasn’t even allowed on the same floor. That’s how it was for my dad a half-century ago at the Catholic hospital near my parents’ apartment in Massachusetts.

Dad brought Mom into the hospital lobby, signed her in and watched her go upstairs. Then he waited near the gift shop until someone came down and told him it was a boy.

So ask your mom about that day. Ask her if you were an early baby or a late baby. Ask her how nervous she was.

Don’t ask about the pain. She’s probably already brought that up, anyway.

It’s a good bet, though, that when you ask about your day, she’ll start to laugh. Or she’ll give that mom kind of “ohhhh” as she takes herself back.

She might surprise you with a few details you didn’t know.

She might surprise herself with some things she hasn’t thought of in years.

My mom says I was easy. She was 21 years old, and I was her second child. My brother had come out undersized 18 months earlier, so she was relieved to see me chubby and healthy.

“You had no hair on the top but a little around the ears,” she told me a few days ago. “You looked like a little old man.”

It’s a connection you have. Today, other people might know you better – your spouse, your kids, even your co-workers – but on that day, no one knew you the same way. You were hers, and she was yours.

And who knows? Maybe you turned out to be something still worth treasuring. At the least, you’re the kind of child who gives your mother a phone call on Mother’s Day.

Even better, you probably also got her flowers.

This story was originally published May 9, 2015 at 6:23 PM with the headline "Flowers and chocolates are nice. Here’s something nicer for mom.."