The best things in your life were planted by the tender hand of your mother

by Richard L. Weaver II

I still remember the advice my mother gave me: “Be careful or you’ll put your eye out,” “What if everyone jumped off a cliff? Would you do it, too?” “You have enough dirt behind your ears to grow potatoes!” “Don’t make that face, or it’ll freeze in that position,” “Close that door! You weren’t brought up in a barn,” “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all,” and the best advice of all, “Always wear clean underwear; you never know when you’ll be in an accident.” My mother was a teacher, thus, giving advice was natural and automatic for her.

Mother’s Day in the United States was loosely inspired by the British holiday and imported by the social activist Julia Ward Howe after the American Civil War. Originally it was a call to unite women against war. Howe did not get formal recognition of a Mother’s Day for Peace. In the United States Howe was influenced by Ann Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker who, starting in 1858, attempted to improve sanitation through what she called Mothers’ Work Days. When Jarvis died in 1904, her daughter, named Anna Jarvis, started to found a memorial day for women. The first one was celebrated in Grafton, West Virginia, on May 10, 1908, in the church where the elder Ann Jarvis had taught Sunday school. Grafton is the home to the International Mother’s Day Shrine. From there, the custom caught on, and the holiday was declared officially by some states beginning in 1912.

It was President Woodrow Wilson who, because of the influence of a national letter-writing campaign to ministers, businessmen, and politicians begun by Jarvis, in 1914, declared the first national Mother’s Day as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war—with specific reference to The Great War, now known as World War I. By 1923 commercialization of the U.S. holiday had become so rampant that Anna Jarvis became a major opponent of how the holiday had evolved. Now, according to the National Restaurant Association, Mother’s Day is the most popular day of the year to dine out at a restaurant.

When I was preparing this essay, I was sitting in church, and my son, Reverend R. Scott Weaver, delivered a sermon entitled, “Are You My Mother?,” and within the sermon he included a quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson, the famous American essayist. Emerson said, “People are what their mothers make them.” That quotation reminded me of a poem from an unknown poet, entitled “Before I Was Myself You Made Me,” that I found and saved many years ago because, for me, it held so many rich truths:

Before I was myself you made me, me
With love and patience, discipline, and tears,
Then bit by bit stepped back to set me free,

Allowing me to sail upon my sea,
Though well within the headlands of your fears.
Before I was myself you made me, me

With dreams enough of what I was to be
And hopes that would be sculpted by the years,
Then bit by bit stepped back to set me free,

Relinquishing your powers gradually
As dancers when the last sweet cadence nears
Bit by bit stepped back to set me free.

For love inspires learning naturally:
The mind assents to what the heart reveres.
And so it was through love you made me, me
By slowly stepping back to set me free.

The influence that our mothers have on us cannot be underestimated, my son said in his sermon, acknowledging my wife, his mother, whose faith permeated his life. “The bond between a child and a mother is unparalleled among all of our lifelong relationships,” my son continued. He then revealed an important irony—that his listeners might believe that his relationship with his spouse would be unparalleled when compared to any other relationship in his life, but he proceeded to explain one of the most fundamental truths regarding relationships. He explained it in this way:

“If a bride thinks that she is going to be able to change the man she intends to marry—or a groom thinks that he is going to be able to change the
woman he intends to marry—to make her what he wants her to be, he isn’t only dealing with the woman—he is dealing with her mother. And for that
bride, she is dealing with HIS mother. And it doesn’t matter if his mother is alive or not! Our mother’s live on with us long after they are a physical
presence in our lives on a daily basis.”

There is a lot that each of us can learn from mothers no matter what our age or place in life, as my son acknowledged. Some of the fundamental truths that I learned from my mother and that have lived with me on a daily basis I wrote in the first paragraph of this essay. There were many others, of course, but it was with my mother’s guidance that I became a writer, and because of her work with me, I dedicated one of my textbooks entitled Understanding Public Communication to her with the inscription, “To Florence B. Weaver with whom I first publicly communicated.” In the copy I sent to her more than 25 years ago, I wrote, “What can I say except all this would have been impossible without you. I love you.”

In his sermon, my son told this story: “There was a devout Christian mother who was always teaching her daughter lessons of faith and trust. She always told her daughter that she never needed to be afraid at any time because God was always near. One summer evening she tucked her little girl in bed after her prayers, put out the light, and went downstairs.

“Then an electrical storm came rolling out of the west with vivid flashes of lightning and a reverberating roar of thunder. Suddenly there was a simultaneous blinding flash and a deafening crash, and when the echoes died away, the mother heard the little girl calling desperately, “Mama! Mama! Come and get me.”

“The mother found her trembling, little girl in tears. After she had soothed her somewhat, she thought it might be an opportune time to teach a spiritual lesson. She said, “My little girl, has Mommy not taught you many times that you need never be afraid, that God is always near, and nothing can harm you?

“The little one put her arms around her mother’s neck and said, “Yes, Mommy. I know that God is always near, but when the lightning and the thunder are so awful, I want someone near me that’s got skin on.”

Scott ended his sermon saying, “Count the best things in your life: character, love, unselfishness, forgiveness, kindness, gentleness. They were all planted by that tender hand so long ago, the hand of that wonderful woman who cuddled you and held you and said, “This is my child.”
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At the website PearlSoup.com http://www.pearlsoup.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=pearls.view&pearlID=17637 Hal Johnson has written an endearing essay entitled, “Thoughts of Mother's Day, and the Guy Who Loved Her Too,” which, in several different ways, will touch your heart.

Mary Moss, in her essay, “One Mother’s Thoughts on Mother’s Day,” http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/238394/one_mothers_thoughts_on_mothers_day.html challenges all readers to keep an open door and an open mind, not just on Mother’s Day, of course, but throughout the year. Mother’s Day, Moss says, should be a day “when every woman in a person's life should be honored, thanked, and celebrated,” and she offers many suggestions for bringing this about.
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Contact Richard L. Weaver II