DR. WALLACE: I'm writing to brighten your day. At the end of my letter, I'm sure you'll be smiling and saying that your day is sunnier.

During my senior year in high school, my boyfriend of two years and I became engaged. About three months before graduation, I discovered that I was pregnant. I stayed in school and graduated with good grades. After graduation, my fiance moved in with my mother and me. I was on cloud nine. I had a healthy pregnancy and a fiance who promised to be by my side forever.

In one day, all that came crashing down. He left with no notice, saying that he wasn't the father and would take a paternity test to prove it. I was eight months pregnant when he left, and in the following four weeks, I was admitted to the hospital emergency room six times for stress-related false labor. I tried to contact his family to help me find reasons for his sudden departure, but they refused to talk to me, and after a few calls, they threatened to have me arrested for harassment.

The evening I brought my daughter into this world, I called him, but he hung up on me. But when our daughter was 6 months old, he called again and said he loved me and wanted to get married so we could become a family.

I thought that he was sincere, so we were married and moved in with his parents because he didn't earn enough money to support a wife and child. We lived there for two years. During that time, he had seven different jobs and four different girlfriends. I continued to stay with him because I thought I loved him and eventually we would become that family I dreamed about.

Finally, I came to the realization that my daughter and I could be a loving family without an unfaithful husband and a do-nothing father. During my stay at his parents' house, I had a part-time job that gave me the opportunity to secretly put away some of my earnings. This allowed me to buy a trailer home.

I am now working full-time at a fair wage and my daughter and I couldn't be happier. She is now 3 years old and the light of my life. She keeps my spirits high and I'm very proud to be her mother. Last week, we made the discovery of gardening together. My daughter and I are a family — a happy, loving, God-fearing family — and I am as proud as I can be. — Mother, Davenport, Iowa.

MOTHER: You were 100 percent correct. Your letter brightened my day and the day of our readers, and I know it will keep doing so for many days and weeks to come.

Parents and their children who don't share love, respect, happiness, loyalty and trust lose the true meaning of what a family should be. It's not the number of people; it's the character of the people that makes a family a real family.

Dr. Robert Wallace welcomes questions from readers. Although he is unable to reply to all of them individually, he will answer as many as possible in this column. E-mail him at rwallace@galesburg.net. To find out more about Dr. Robert Wallace and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.