“Observations”©

Donald S. Conkey

Date: May 6, 2004 - # 619 - Mothers Day (811)

Mother’s Day will be celebrated Sunday here in Cherokee County and around most of the world. Card shops, flower shops, garden centers, and gift shops will be busy this week as forgetful children, and husbands, rush out to buy that special gift that tells mothers they are remembered – and loved.

       And should you forget that special card, flower arrangement or gift the “Words I Love You Mom” may really be the gift your mom will appreciate the most, along with a few hugs and kisses on the cheek, with another “I Love You Mom.” 

        In past years I reviewed the history of Mother’s Day and told of how my mother, after gathering her family around her, died peaceably, slipping silently from mortality into immortality with a smile of peace and satisfaction on her face. She is still missed – and always will be. Our seventy-year mother-son relationship was special. She and I worked together for over thirty years locating family ancestors for my twelve family history books. She knew where every branch and twig fit on the family tree.

       Researching and publishing my family history helped me know my grandmothers for generations back. They were strong women. They had to be. Vicariously I walked with them as they boarded small sailing vessels in the 1700s and 1800s in Scotland and Ireland, surrounded by those left behind and crying children, and spending several weeks with them crossing the torturous Atlantic Ocean. I helped them carry on board their supplies, sufficient to last eighteen months. And I helped them bury those that died at sea, or at their ports of entry, or inland as they built their homes in the wilderness.

       Once in America I again walked with these women through the forests, hovered with them over open fires to keep the wolves at bay, and cooked with them over open fires until their husbands could build a lean too or a small log cabin. One grandmother tells of listened to “wolves hungrily howl a short distance away” with only a blanket-door separating them. Another letter tells of a great great grandmother walking “across the mud flats of Toronto,” in the dead of winter, carrying a two year old, my great grandmother, and sitting on logs crying, not wanting to go on. But with help from a loving husband they arrived at their destination where they built a one-room log cabin in the wilderness. They were my ancestral mothers, strong women, and mothers of large families. Some died in childbirth, alone in the wilderness, others lived to be a hundred, surrounded by family.

       Studying one’s family history helps one learn each generation faces its own separate challenges. It is easy to think our ancestor’s challenges were greater than today’s challenges. But I wonder. They faced four-legged wolves in their wildernesses; today’s generation’s wolves are drugs and pornography. Their generation built a nation of freedom with faith in God. Our generation wants to rid America of God. History reminds us no nation has ever long survived ignoring the Laws of God.

       My life has been intertwined with the lives of many women, or potential women – a great grandmother, two grandmothers, my mother, my wife, six daughters, three daughters-in-law, sixteen granddaughters, two step granddaughter’s in-law, and eight great granddaughters. And I cannot forget those ancestral grand mothers that date back to the early 1600s.

       There is something special about these women, as there is about all women. They share something special one-with-another – they are all daughters of a loving Heavenly Father who were sent into mortality to perform a noble work – to become mothers to nurture one or more of His spirit children.

       These women, or potential women, have each blessed my life. My mother nurtured me. My grandmothers trained and helped my mother. My wife loved me, and together we created our own family, watching it grow exponentially. My daughters allowed me to see the Hand of God, His Intellectual Designs, at work in them, as that innate female computer chip implanted in each of them (nature’s law) moved them from childhood, to adolescence, to motherhood, and to grandmother-hood. It is a wonderful Plan to watch. It is a Plan that provides purpose, gives meaning to life, and brings joy to one’s soul, an everlasting joy that only a mother or father can fully comprehend.

       Mothers have been endowed of God with a built-in nature that allows them to go into the valley of the shadow of death to bring another Spirit into mortality, and then to love them, and nurture them, and prepare them to become a responsible adult – and perpetuate Nature’s cycle of life – His Plan.

       Yes, Sunday is a special day for all females – mothers and potential mothers. Cherish that special one that gave you life, and remember the words “I Love You” will endear you to her even more.