<a href="mailto:gordandk@aol.com">By GORDIE LITTLE</a>
Small Talk
May 11, 2008 05:02 am
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What new can be said about Mother's Day? Allow me some personal reflections.
Although it's nice for us to honor our moms every second Sunday in May, we should do it every day.
To use the words of a friend, "Most young kids don't truly respect their mothers. Too often, parents are just used."
I'm not going to generalize about why that observation rings true today. Suffice to say, "Times they are a-changin."
As I write this May 6, I am reminded that the Hindenburg disaster happened on this date in 1937, a month before I was born.
I have a small, wooden piece of the huge craft, the death throes of which are imbedded in my psyche. A member of the ground crew at Lakehurst, N.J., gave it to my dad as a souvenir a day after the actual event.
What does it have to do with Mother's Day? That hunk of the Hindenburg sat on my dad's office desk until he died. I heard my practical mother ask often, "Why do you keep that worthless piece of wood hanging around?"
Each time she attempted to throw it away, my dad retrieved it.
"Alta Grace," he would patiently explain, "This is a piece of history. I need to save it for posterity."
She would shake her head and walk away.
I picked it up many times, trying to imagine what those moments were like as it erupted into an inferno and crashed to the ground. I have a copy of the "live" recording made by reporter Herb Morrison on the scene. His impassioned words, "Oh, the humanity," can never be forgotten by anyone who has heard them.
My dad wanted me to have that piece of the Hindenburg, and it is a prized possession. We always thought it was part of a propeller; but experts at Lakehurst tell me they have never seen a piece like it. Their best guess is that it is a chunk of the wooden bar railing from the giant zeppelin.
I have written often of my late mother's impact on my life. Most of her lessons for me were hard-learned because I was a stubborn and impetuous child.
Thank goodness my mother lived long enough for me to thank her properly for her unique nurturing. I am loath to admit that, like so many youth today, I didn't really appreciate either of my parents until their latter years.
My mother read to me from the moment of my birth and taught me to appreciate the written word long before I went to school.
She was a speech major in college and was my stern coach throughout the speaking contests in high school. Her extemporaneous story-telling inspired me to embrace that "art" in my own adult life.
When I forgot my valedictory speech at graduation and had to be prompted by my English teacher from the wings, I think my mother walked out of the auditorium.
Her love of nature in all its forms and the greenness of her thumbs were not lost on her prodigal son.
She wasn't the best cook in the world, and I hated those daily doses of cod liver oil, but I have come to realize its value and even now take Omega 3 fish oil capsules.
Her lifetime passion for physical exercise was also part of her legacy.
I must confess that her sometimes close-minded and narrow religious beliefs had little appeal to me as a child and an adult. I have somehow been able to winnow out the parts I couldn't accommodate and have embraced the rest.
My mom loved music, and we spent happy times around the piano as she played and we sang.
Although, in retrospect, I cannot view my relationship with Alta Grace as "tender," I can look back on it as "top quality." I was born and brought up in times that were far from tender. My relationship with her in the last 10 years of her life with all the hugs and kisses made up for the ones I might have missed along the way.
There have been many famous people named Howard Johnson. One of them was a songwriter who penned "I Scream, You Scream, We all Scream for Ice Cream." He also wrote "Ireland Must Be Heaven, for My Mother Came from There." Oh, and one more. It's one you might want to sing to your mother today. Written in 1915 with music by Theodore Morse, its title is "M-O-T-H-E-R" and it starts, "M is for the million things she gave me."
I have a collected many "mother" quotes, but my favorite is said to be an ancient Chinese proverb: "There is only one pretty child in the world, and every mother has it."
My brother Jim is still trying to unravel what our mother meant to him. She named him James Russell Little after James Russell Lowell who wisely wrote, "The best academy, a mother's knee."
Have a magnificent Mother's Day and please, drive carefully on your way to brunch.
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