LEDGER COLUMNIST

Me and my Mom I wrote this column for the May 10, 2006 edition of The Gaffney Ledger. It is being reprinted and dedicated to mothers everywhere, especially mine who still resides in West Columbia. Mother's Day this year is Sunday, May 13. "God could not be everywhere, and therefore he created mothers." - Rudyard Kipling

Mother's Day is Sunday, May 14 and mothers across the United States and beyond will be showered with gifts and love from their children.

Some will do so because they feel they have to. Others deride the day as being too commercial, but still others jump at the opportunity to express love and appreciation to their mothers.

According to a Web site I searched, "The earliest Mother's Day celebrations are traced back to the spring celebrations of ancient Greece in honor of Rhea, wife of Cronus and the Mother of the Gods and goddesses.

"In Rome the most significant Mother's Day-like festival was dedicated to the worship of Cybele, another mother goddess. Ceremonies in her honor began some 250 years before Christ was born. This Roman religious celebration, known as Hilaria, lasted for three days - from March 15 to 18!

"During the 1600's, England celebrated a day called "Mothering Sunday", celebrated on the 4th Sunday of Lent (also called Mid-Lent Sunday). "Mothering Sunday" honored the mothers of England. As Christianity spread throughout Europe the celebration changed to honor the "Mother Church" - the spiritual power that gave them life and protected them from harm. Over time the church festival blended with the Mothering Sunday celebration."

Anna M. Jarvis (1864-1948) is credited as being the originator of Mother's Day as we celebrate here in the United States.

Again, according to the Web site, "The younger Anna Jarvis was only twelve years old in 1876 when she listened to her mother teach a Sunday school lesson on mothers in the Bible. "I hope and pray that someone, sometime, will found a memorial mother's day," the senior Jarvis said. "There are many days for men, but none for mothers."

After her mother's death, Jarvis, who was still unmarried, began a push for a national Mother's Day holiday so that children would begin appreciating their mothers while they still lived and such a holiday would increase the respect for parents and strengthen families.

"Jarvis persuaded her mother's church in Grafton, West Virginia to celebrate Mother's Day on the second anniversary of her mother's death, the 2nd Sunday of May. Carnations, her mother's favorite flowers, were supplied at that first service by Miss Jarvis. White carnations were chosen because they represented the sweetness, purity and endurance of mother love. Red carnations, in time, became the symbol of a living mother. White ones now signify that one's mother has died. By the next year Mother's Day was also celebrated in Philadelphia. By 1911 Mother's Day was celebrated in almost every state. Nowadays, flowers have become an almost universal way to send Mother's Day wishes."

Congress passed a joint resolution May 18, 1914 designating the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day and President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation making Mother's Day an official national holiday.

For most of my almost 55 years, I've lived within a stone's throw of my mother, except for the seven years I was in Columbia going to school and finding my way.

I saw her often. She stopped by the Ledger, we had lunch. I sat behind her in church, she came to my house to visit (my children, I suspect) and I went to hers to visit. I saw her at the Y, at the grocery store or just out walking in her neighborhood.

Not until she and my Dad moved to West Columbia last year did I realize how much I cherished those visits and chance encounters.

But I am fortunate. I can pick up the phone and talk to her. I can drive an hour and a half to sit and talk with her. We can have lunch together. She sends me notes and letters.

Watching my wife interact with our daughter and her son gives me a good perspective on what makes a mother a mother. It is not simply having children, as John A. Shedd said. (Don't ask me who he is, I got the quote out of my 'Progressive Farmer' magazine.)

The love a mother has for her children is unconditional.

Men will never understand it, even though we may have children of our own. That's not to say fathers don't have special relationships with their children, but a mother's love is different, just as the love children have for their mother is different than that for their father.

Every parting with my mother is the same and has been for years:.

"You know what?" she asks. "You love me." I respond.

"Forever and ever," she says.

If she is still living, I'm sure your mother feels the same way about you. And if she isn't, I'm sure she did.

That's the way mothers are.

Cody Sossamon (cody@gaffneyledger.com) is publisher of The Gaffney Ledger.