MOUNT VERNON — “I love Mother’s Day,” said Donna Andrews, who resides at the Rose Garden Nursing Home. “It’s spring and we’ve got beautiful flowers. I enjoy Mother’s Day.”
Andrews isn’t alone. There are few mothers who don’t enjoy the second Sunday in May, if their offspring have gone to the trouble to make it special.
Ina Earnest said her children always send cards to express their love and greetings.
“They treat me really well for Mother’s Day,” she said.
Frances Dezien, 85, said her two children are always thoughtful on the holiday.
“Their best present was being themselves,” she said.
A time to honor motherhood goes back to millennia ago, when ceremonies honored female goddesses rather than actual human mothers. The Egyptians celebrated the goddess Isis with an annual festival, as they believed her to be the mother of the divine pharaohs. The ancient Greeks and Romans held similar feast days for mother-goddesses.
Early Christians held festivals to bring flowers and gifts to their “mother church,” the church in which they had been baptized.
The English began to celebrate Mothering Day in the 1600s, during Lent, and the working classes were allowed to travel home to visit family on that spring day.
But when English settlers came to America, they abandoned Mothering Day, perhaps because of their austere Puritan beliefs. But as the idea of a free country took root, Mother’s Day was reinvented in truly American form.
The author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” Julia Ward Howe, proclaimed a commemorative Mother’s Day in 1870, but her observance wasn’t just to honor mothers. Howe had been so deeply affected by the carnage of the Civil War that she created a day for mothers to come together to protest the deaths of their sons — and the sons of other mothers — and to celebrate peace as well as motherhood. Howe even proposed that Mother’s Day be held on the Fourth of July, to redirect America’s birthday to reflect peace instead of war.
Today’s churches often commemorate Mother’s Day with mother-daughter or “all-daughters” banquets. On Thursday, Greer Wesleyan Church will host a covered-dish Mother-Daughter Banquet at 6:30 p.m. Mulberry Street United Methodist Church will hold a “Hats Off to Mothers and Daughters” themed banquet on Friday at 6 p.m.
Marilyn Yeager, a retired Mount Vernon Middle School teacher, has a favorite memory of her special day.
“My mother and mother-in-law and all of us would get together and we had very many nice Mother’s Days,” she said. “When they passed on, we would get together at one of the younger mother’s homes. It’s like Christmas, without gifts. But lots of good food, visiting, memories and pictures. I have many wonderful memories, and the little ones are so special.
“We should give thanks every day for the blessings our mothers gave us,” said Yeager. “They gave us life and everything we are. We women are the vessels by which all men and women are born. Where would we be without our mothers?”
“I was one of seven siblings," said Wanza Smith, “and we always got together for Mother’s Day. Once somebody came in and asked my mother how old she was and she replied, ‘I’m not!’
“I have precious memories of my mother. Her yes was yes and her no was no. If it hadn’t been for her and her teaching, I wouldn’t be who I am today.”
Added Smith, “I had a son in the Navy and no matter where he was in the world, he always called me on Mother’s Day. If my children couldn’t come home, they called. And they always plan something special. This year, my daughter’s coming in from Long Beach, Calif. They just come. We have a lot of love and fun in our family.”
Smith said she learned about the gift of motherhood early.
“All I ever wanted to be in life was a mother,” she said. “Even when I was little, that’s all I wanted. Motherhood is the crowning glory of womanhood.”
At Summerville at HillenVale, Dorothy Harper, 85, visited with her daughter, Dee Goehler, who has two sons and a step-daughter of her own. Goehler reminded her mother about a past Mother’s Day present, a Mother’s Day ring with her children’s birthstones.
“I have four children, so there were four stones in the ring,” said Harper. “My birthday, Sept. 24, is the same as Dee’s. I’ve got some of the best children.”
Goehler’s favorite memory is of a Mother’s Day meal with the whole family at the former San Dar Smorgasbord in Bellville.
“None of the mothers had to cook,” she said.
