Mother's Day

Yesterday was Mother’s Day, and in the midst of delicious dinners, phone calls from my children, gifts and kindnesses, I kept thinking about my own mother, who died nineteen years ago. She was a mother from a very different era. It was a time when mothers didn’t work outside the home. Families had only one car, and mothers got to use it one afternoon a week to run all their errands. My mother did all our laundry in a wringer washing machine, hung everything on the clothesline to dry (summer and winter), sprinkled each piece of clothing with water and then rolled it up in a plastic bag to be ironed the next day. My mother baked all the bread our family of nine ate. She kneaded it by hand in a special bread pan. Two or three times a week when I came home from school the bread pan was sitting on the counter waiting for the dough to rise. My mother took care of the yard herself, raising beautiful roses and gladiolas that she cut and sold to others. My mother was the best seamstress I’ve ever known. With five girls in the family, she made all our clothes until we were old enough to sew for ourselves – little jumpers with rick rack trim and hand-embroidered flowers; Sunday dresses with ruffles, lace and ribbon; matching dresses for weddings, wedding gowns, Jr. Prom formals. She could take a picture from a magazine and sew it herself for a fraction of the cost. She did it all on a treadle sewing machine.

We children didn’t have money to spend, but somehow we managed to save our pennies and on Mother’s Day, two of my sister’s and I would combine our nickels and dimes and buy our mother a piece of Milk Glass. She loved it (or at least she made us believe that she loved it). She displayed it on two corner cupboards in our dining room – jelly dishes, butter plates, cream pitchers, sugar bowls, dessert plates. When my mother passed away, one of the things I chose was the milk glass pitcher and glasses we had so proudly given her for Mother’s Day.


Thank you, Mother, for your wonderful example, for the happy childhood you gave me, for your testimony of the Lord, Jesus Christ. Thank you for all the ringlets you brushed, all the stories you read, all the petticoats you starched and ironed, all the meals we ate together as a family. Thank you for being patient. Thank you for expecting “the best” from us. Thank you for loving our dad and standing by him. Thank you for loving us and showing us the way. You’ve been a tough act to follow!