Mother Love

My wife says my 93-year-old mother is the epitome of her generation of Southern womanhood:  a genuine confluence of Southern respectability and a deeply generous heart.  A college friend who spent a weekend with us went back to the city and, referring to the character on “The Andy Griffith Show,” declared, “I just met the real Aunt Bea.”

Her uniquely Southern double name, Mary Cornelia, usually is pronounced in such a way that my cousins from North Carolina thought until they were teenagers that her name was American Eagle.

Mother was in her seventies before she would go to the store without first having her hair done and without stockings, pumps, and a matching purse.

Mother always has insisted, as her own parents did, that every question from an elder be answered with “Yes, Ma’am” or “No, Ma’am,” “Yes, Sir” or “No, Sir.”  For Mother, this is not some empty gesture or dead litany, but a sign of respect.  Mother even referred to her dear friend, a tad bit her senior, whom she had known for more than eight decades, as Mrs. Riggs.?

Despite, or perhaps because of, Mother’s deep concern for both respect and respectability, our door was open to anyone in need, regardless of social status.  Mother simply is the most accepting, embracing, warmest person I have ever known.  She learned these values from her mother, her father and the neighbors and friends who loved them and her.

One area family was infamous as the poorest, as well as the most prolific.  At any mention of the family, we kids made faces and made fun.  Of course, it was this family’s children Mother brought home to bathe, de-lice, put in new clothes, brag on and love on.  When she returned them to our elementary school, she embraced and kissed the children.  The little girl hugged Mother’s neck and would not let go.  Mother’s actions created a stir among some, but she went right ahead.

Nor did she stop after she created an even bigger stir by giving some family burial plots to a couple with lots of illness, not much life expectancy, and no money.  Mother soon heard that some friends with plots nearby were upset.  It wasn’t fit for “those people” to be buried there, they said, and what was Mary Cornelia thinking?

“I don’t know why they care,” Mother sadly but defiantly told my wife. “They’ll be dead then and it won’t matter who they’re next to.”

To understand Mother’s sense of responsibility for her neighbors, you’d have to understand her Mother.

Her mother, Miss Johnnie, was our town’s unpaid social worker.  Barely five feet tall, she walked rapidly all over town, taking whatever the sick needed and the poor could not afford.  Baskets of groceries for the hungry.  Home-cooked meals for the sick.  Clean sheets for the poor women to lie on as they gave birth.  Medicines from her husband’s drug store, knowing that many could never pay and no one was ever billed. 

When the Depression hit, she just did more of the same.

When the Mississippi River flooded, she spent weeks at the church, cooking and caring for the refugees, many of them poor sharecroppers.

After Miss Johnnie died in 1952, a Memphis newspaper reported, “She was what the town said was an ‘angel of mercy,’ visiting in homes in Dresden whenever there was sorrow or distress bearing messages of cheer and good will.”

Miss Johnnie has been gone for more than a half century, yet people still tell me, “Your grandmother taught me in Sunday School. She loved us so and I loved her!”  Miss Johnnie died before I was born, but those who knew her and know my mother tell me I didn’t miss a thing.  They have seen her faithful love live on in my mother.

This week across much of Tennessee, when our communities have been devastated by flooding, so many responded like Miss Johnnie and Mother.  With fervent prayers, kind hearts, and helping hands.

Mother’s Day is not about mere sentiment, but something much more substantive.  It’s about the love that has shaped the very best parts of who we are.  It’s about the love that has changed us and can change our world. 

Thanks be to God for our Mothers and their Mother Love.

Happy Mother’s Day.

Roy