More than a century ago, in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the second Sunday in May a national holiday in honor of mothers.
Along with moms, two big beneficiaries were a pair of fledging companies, both founded four years earlier: Florists’ Telegraph Delivery Association, better known as FTD, the country’s first flowers-by-mail service; and Hall Brothers Greeting Cards, which would later rebrand as Hallmark.
“All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother,” Abraham Lincoln once said, a sentiment worthy of gracing a Hallmark card for the rest of us to share with our own moms.
The great writer Rudyard Kipling perhaps put it best of all: “God could not be everywhere and therefore He made mothers.”
Motherhood, like God, is in the details. There are more examples of angel mothers’ godliness in small things than there are stars in the Milky Way, but here is one: Any sandwich tastes better when it is made by your mom for she always adds one extra ingredient – love – and, of course, knows if you prefer it cut in half diagonally or straight across.
The magic touch of moms extends far beyond sandwiches. Even when you are an adult, you will sleep sounder in a bed made by Mom; even when the same laundry detergent is used, clothes smell and feel better when Mom washes and folds them; and no hug can top Mom’s!
Yes, a mom’s love is in the details. One more example, from Mother’s Day a year ago. Our son and his young family came to visit, and my wife Lisa remembered that Greg and his lovely bride Jess favor a certain brand of non-alcoholic ginger beer that is hard to find. Lisa did not fail to find it.
Being a mom, Lisa also bought an extra six-pack for them to take home, along with two grocery bags filled with a cornucopia of favorite foods of theirs, and one-year-old Amara’s too.
While packing up to leave, Greg accidentally dropped a bottle of ginger beer on the kitchen floor and it exploded like a hand grenade with amber glass shards and bigger shrapnel flying everywhere. As messes go, it was a non-boozy doozy.
Lisa, bless her mommy heart, just laughed and asked her little boy if he was okay; asked him to step away carefully so he did not cut himself; told him not only that she would clean it up, but that she had been meaning to mop the floor anyway; all in a voice as sweet as when Greg was five and still called Greggie, for she did not want him crying over spilled milk – or spilled ginger beer.
Making the memory truly magical, however, is what happened next: Lisa’s little boy shooed her out of the kitchen so she would not get hurt, then swept up the glass and mopped the tile floor. The greeting card and flowers he had given her were nice, but this was the sweeter gift.
With this Sunday being Mother’s Day, let me close with another Hall Brothers card-worthy quote, from early-20th-century author Dorothy Canfield Fisher: “A mother is not a person to lean on, but a person to make leaning unnecessary.”
Wise words figuratively, yet sometimes literally leaning is wonderful. I say this after recently watching Greg, a little boy grown into a 6-foot-3 man, lean down and wrap his mom in a cocoon-like hug while resting his chin on her head. Lisa’s smile and eyes closed in contentment were evidence that any day with a child is a mother’s special day.
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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn
Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.
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Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn.