An Amazing Woman

Today we celebrate our mother.  She goes by many names:  Mom;  Mama;  Mutti .  When we were little we might have called her Mommy.  And I’ve even heard her called Mumsie occasionally.

What is a mother?  The dictionary tells me that the word “mother” is both a noun and a verb:

mother – noun - a woman in relation to a child or children to whom she has given birth.

mother – verb – to bring up (a child) with care and affection.  As in  "the art of mothering"

So, I guess the verb includes cooking, cleaning, sewing, baking, gardening, washing diapers and tons of laundry, fishing dolls out of outhouses, finding snakes in blue jeans, helping us with essays and 4-H projects, teaching us to play piano, attending school plays and graduations, putting together weddings (and wedding dresses, literally), knitting for children and and all those grandchildren, and, and, and …

Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt extolled mothers by saying that “no ordinary work done by a man is either as hard or as responsible as the work of a mother who is bringing up a family of small children…..for upon her time and strength demands are made not only every hour of the day but often every hour of the night.”

I found some other quotations that describe the ways that mothers, and certainly our mother, live out the verb “to mother.”

The phrase "working mother" is redundant.

 Or how about this one?

Now, as always, the most automated appliance in a household is the mother.

 Any mother could perform the jobs of several air traffic controllers with ease.

 God could not be everywhere, so he created mothers.  ~Jewish Proverb

And, I’d say God knew what he was doing.  There aren’t too many areas of life where we see that kind of intelligence, devotion, self-sacrifice, and multi-tasking abilities at work all at once, functioning for years and years at a time, seven days a week, 24 hours a day.

As one of the characters on the TV series “Golden Girls” once proclaimed, “It's not easy being a mother.  If it were easy, fathers would do it.”

And here’s my favourite quotation, attributed to Milton Berle, that I chose because I’m sure it often felt true for Mama:

If evolution really works, how come mothers have only two hands? 

I guess we could sum up that the verb part of the definition means loving.  And loving opens a whole new area of discussion.  Because our mother definitely loves us, fiercely and proudly.  Certainly in all the work she did to give us such a good start in life but also because she thinks we’re wonderful.  Have you noticed that when Mama talks about the 6 of us, we’re all perfect?  We are always right; we never make mistakes?  If only our husbands and wives could learn what she knows!

Although there are millions of mothers in the world, no two are alike.  They differ in the way they love their children and the way they raise them.  Poet Helen Jackson says the mother “who creates and sustains a home and under whose hands children grow up to be strong, pure men and women, is a creator second only to God.”

What does a mother do to deserve such accolades?  All the things our mother did when we were young. 

 
And what does our mother’s love look like now?  We look at the past again to see the pattern.

Her love was the kind that held our little hands for a while but will hold our hearts forever.  The kind that sacrificed herself for our good.  If there were only seven pieces of pie for eight people, she would have said that she really doesn’t care for pie anyway.  I know she often gave up new clothes for herself so that we could have what we needed … and half the time that still meant hours at the sewing machine late into the night.  That kind of love and sacrifice endures in a woman’s character because it molds her heart and makes her a better person than she ever expected to be.

She gave up her right to personal freedom to care for her babies.  She forfeited sleep, rest and relaxation, peace of mind, a career, and all kinds of material things for us to have what we needed.

And Mama, aided and abetted by our father, taught us to love God.  She did it with words, by teaching us prayers, and by telling us stories of faith.  She did it with prayer.  And she still does.  Did you know that Mama prays for each one of us every day and for her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, too?  Just the other day, she said to me very casually that she had already prayed her rosary for the day but something told her to pray a second one, so she did.  

Novelist Paula Fox said: “A mother’s life is like a hymn of praise to the Lord; not only in the way she speaks but also in the way she serves others, because she gives glory to the Lord.”

Now I know Mama is going to think I’m going a little “over the top” with that quotation but wise people have been saying things like that for centuries and I think we are lucky enough to have the kind of mother they refer to.  William Thackeray wrote, “Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.”

This quotation describes what I mean:  “If you have a mom, there is nowhere you are likely to go where a prayer has not already been.”

And here’s something else I read that I’m aspiring to in many ways:

“Mirror, mirror on the wall,

I am my mother after all.”

Young women, when they reach that magical age when they suddenly know everything and their parents become poor deluded people (fortunately a short stage for most of us), are quite certain they are very different from their mothers and think that’s a good thing.  But with a few years and a lot of wisdom (I hope), I’ve come to be proud of the ways that I’m like Mama.  And if someone tells me how much I look like my mother, I thank them for the lovely compliment.

I think that’s why I enjoy my sisters so much and treasure their friendship so deeply, because they, too, each in her own way, is her mother after all.  Another gift we want to thank her for.

 In the long run, mothers are like rare antiques, they increase in value as years go by.  Have you noticed many of the best things in life come in twos and threes, in dozens, and even in hundreds?  We get plenty of roses, stars, sunsets, rainbows, brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, comrades and friends - but there’s only one mother in the whole world for each of us… and none as loving, devoted, and beautiful as ours.

Happy 80th Birthday,  Mama