HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY

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When the evening shadows fall
and the lovely day is through
Then with longing I recall
the years I spent with you

Mama, I miss the days
when you were near to guide me
Mama, those happy days
when you were here beside me

Safe in the glow of your love
Sent from the heavens above
Nothing can ever replace
The warmth of your tender embrace

Oh, Mama, until the day
that we're together once more
I'll live in these memories
Until the day that we're together once more.

There are special moments that I remember so fondly, moments long ago, when life was so simple.

My mother was a good lady, perhaps stronger than anyone I ever knew except my wife.  She had a blind faith, a resolute personality, indefatigable and determined.

She didn’t particularly suffer fools, and wouldn’t entertain foolishness much, but she could laugh with the best of them, even in a dark hour, yet was very shy.

She was a creature of habit, longing for only quiet and her God, her children were taught early on that respect was important if you liked your skin, and that a wooden spoon was multipurpose: cooking wasn’t the only thing it could do. She didn’t go around pretending holiness, or preach or think she had to worry about people’s souls, just her own and her children’s. She was never a phony.

There was the time when I as her child, which one, the younger of course, for I am always her child: when she took me to church, and I learned that this would be a time of solemnity, devotion and prayer, a surrendering of yourself to God. And I put silver buttons in the collection basket and kept the two nickels my Dad had given me for the collection. She never let me forget that one. It became folklore in a manner of speaking throughout the family and with her grandchildren.Or the Sunday Mass when I placed a spider in the hair of a lady who felt the need to look down on us because we occupied a pew with her name on the pew.

There were the many times she cried over her mother, and I would cry seeing her sob, her taking me with her on a bus to Queens to St. John’s Cemetery and her mother’s grave, Grandma Mary's. She cried for her mom’s sacrifices as a young single mother with three young girls and no father, a father who deserted his family.

There was the time when she made me visit all those churches with her, on a cold afternoon and her in her fur coat, stopping for Halloween cup cakes for her kids. That moment just sticks in my mind: it wasn’t expected, we were poor!

She could bake and bake well. Making holiday cookies, cakes and pies with a love for the art. Cooking was her specialty, bringing wonderful creations to the table that we were too dumb to really appreciate until it was too late. Aunt Lena as she was called was known for her cooking by all her nieces and nephews.

I remember coming home from school, swinging open the front door and yelling: "Mom! I'm home!" Getting home from work or college in the early evening, my dinner waiting for me in the oven, the warmth of the kitchen and her presence welcoming me to where I wanted to be in all the world.

Many people lose their mother, and on Mother’s Day miss their mothers terribly, today so do I for the first time. Maybe we will be united once more-someday.

To all you who still have your mother’s give them a kiss for me, and for all those that miss their Mom today, let’s say a silent prayer that we will be reunited in the after-life. Today is mom's birthday too, she would have been 97.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY MOM, AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOO! 

 

Love, your only son.