NOTE: I don’t know the circumstances as to why I did not post this on the website. Maybe it was just too personal and painful last year when I wrote it. Or maybe I had doctor’s appointments to take my husband to. Whatever the reason, I feel compelled to add this post to my blog now. Enjoy my memories and God bless. Have a great day!!
Mother's Day
Mother’s Day has always been a day I have looked forward to for as long as I can remember. As a child growing up in a large family, we did not have any extra money to spend on gifts of any kind, even Mother’s Day gifts. However, Mama always knew she was well loved by all of her children. I don’t especially remember giving her a gift each year, whether handmade or bought. I am sure I did sometimes but what it may have been slips my mind.
As I grew up and moved away from home, I remember calling her to wish her a Happy Mother’s Day and probably sent a card in the mail. After moving back to Arkansas and getting married, I always gave her a small gift. In fact, the first year I was married, I gave her a bouquet of roses from my yard. She always loved flowers of all kinds and especially roses. Her thumb must have been green all the way up her arm for she could make a stick sprout leaves and grow! However, roses were not her plant apparently. She would try her best to grow roses but they always withered and died. Maybe it was the soil she had to grow them in was too rocky on the farm. She was so proud of the roses I gave her that year and I was thrilled to have them for her. As the years went by, I would try to get her a bouquet each year but I’m sure I missed several years along the way. This year, as usual, the roses are blooming on the front yard fence. As I set at my sewing machine working on projects, I look out at the beauty of God’s roses and think of Mama.
Mother’s Day took on a whole new meaning when I became a mother. My children gave me many gifts through the years but the one that stands out in my memory the most is the “wheel chair”. I don’t recall what year it was but when the older children were still quite small, their dad took them to Wal-Mart to get my Mother’s Day gift. Our daughter was all excited when they got back home and burst in the back door with the news they had bought me a “wheel chair”! I looked at my husband in amazement and wondered what in the world was he thinking, getting me a wheel chair. When the box was brought in, and I got a good look at this wheel chair, I burst out laughing. They had bought me a rolling desk chair for the computer desk. She was correct. It was a wheel chair, just not the one I had pictured!!
This year Mother’s Day has so many bittersweet memories since Mama passed away late last year. I miss her so much and just can’t seem to want to celebrate Mother’s Day at all this year. As Mama would say, “You have your own family now and you must think of them.” Yes, I do have a family but with the Covid 19 virus running rampant all over the world, we can’t even spend time together this year. I do wish we could have a big family dinner somewhere and spend time with our daughter and her new husband as well as our oldest son, his wife and daughter. Our other two sons live with us so we get to see them every day but I sure do miss seeing the others. And that granddaughter is going to be half grown up by the time we get to spend time with her again. We were the baby sitters up until this virus arrived and shut us down. It has been 6 plus weeks since we got to spend time with her. She has given up the bottle and binky. She was just beginning to pull up and stand on her own when we last saw her. Just the other day, they sent me a video of her walking all by herself. She is such a big girl now and this Granny is missing out on those Penny loves!
Not only will Mother’s Day be different for me but it will for most all of the mothers out there in the world. I do want to wish everyone a great big Happy Mother’s Day from all of us. Mama has gone to be with God in heaven and spending her first Mother’s Day with Daddy and her children that have gone on before her. The ones she left behind will miss her come Sunday, but we all have our families to spend time with. Mama not being here this year will leave a big hole in the day but I know she is with Jesus.