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Show Kathleen Norris Says: Remember Your Mother Today (Bell Syndicate WNU Service.) 5 fii Your mother's heart is going to follow you wherever you are in camp, in the air or far off on dangerous seas. These are dark days for mothers; as never before your mother needs a message from you this Mother's day. By KATHLEEN NORRIS GOOD mothers are the most valuable thing in the world. All the love, appreciation, respect, honor that good mothers get isn't one-tenth enough for them. No nation has ever been just in recognizing what good mothers moth-ers do; mothers are never publicly rewarded; they get no decorations.no high places. But the fact remains that they are the most valuable persons in the world. Mothers' lives have two phases. The first is giving; the second is receiving. They like the giving years best; they love the time when the children are small, when love and service keep them busy every moment of the day, when they drop into bed exhausted every night. It is one of the Divine decrees that a good mother shall love her job. To the skeptical, sophisticated outsider's out-sider's eye that job looks dull enough. It means the early summons sum-mons of an alarm clock, a cold dark kitchen turned into a place of warmth and light; it means bubbling bub-bling oatmeal and the opening of milk-bottles; it means crib blankets to air, school lunches, rubbers, goodbye good-bye kisses, telephone, grocer, picking pick-ing up small pajamas, making small beds, planning of meals, baking of potatoes, help with homework, dishes to wash, scratches and bumps to soothe, cough medicine, scolding, guiding, judging, consoling, advising. advis-ing. An Endless List. NO JUST REWARD? "No nation," says Kathleen Norris, "has been just in recognizing rec-ognizing what good mothers do." But she believes that, because be-cause a good mother loves her job, she finds her reward in the joy of doing it well. She loves every minute of those early years when her life is an endless succession of rubbers, measles, school lunch boxes, stray cats. And she loves the memory of those years after her children have grown up and discovered that they no longer need her. Today, busy and courageous as always, she asks no other reward. Empty spaces in her heart; no use making hot cakes on this frosty, morning; she can't eat them and they aren't permitted on Dad's diet. No use picking up a small padlock and chain, a doll's hat, a box of crayons in the store; nobody at home is small enough to shriek with excitement when they are presented. If those early days called for strength of mind and body, these later ones make even heavier demands de-mands on her soul. Her Duty Is to Be Happy. Resign yourself to being to your children only the loved memory of their happy youth. Never question them as to how often they write you or come to see you. Their lives are parted irrevocably from yours now; such services as you can do them or the grandchildren are just so much pure gold, pressed down and running over the richness of life. Nothing is your "right," your "due," to be claimed with complaints com-plaints and reproaches. Your duty is to be happy, busy, preoccupied, without any reference to them. The mother of whom sons and daughters boast is the mother whose life is independently, individually indi-vidually occupied, so that to keep beloved be-loved grandchildren over a weekend, week-end, or go to a son's house for an interval of housekeeping or nursing during the younger wife's absence, is to grant a favor. So much for duty, a mother's last duty to the children. But those children chil-dren have a duty, too, and now when the year brings around Mother's Moth-er's day it is a duty so mixed with love, pleasure, memory, and honor that its warmth and beauty fill the land. Flower shops, candy makers, telegraph boys, telephone operators, mail men, are all kept busy while American sons and daughters turn back for just one happy day, to think of Mother. Needs a Message. And believe me, speaking for all mothers today, no matter how busy that wonderful mother of yours may be, no matter how sensibly and bravely she has accepted the facts of your marriage, your absorption in things outside her reach, she's going to remember that it's Mother's Moth-er's day; she's going to keep one ear free for the telephone, the other for the doorbell; her heart and her prayers are going to follow you wherever you are in camp, in the air, far off on the dangerous blue seas. A Canadian woman showed me a letter she received last Mother's day. No money on earth could buy the penciled half-sheet a young flier sent home to his mother that day. It said, "Loving you, having a glorious glo-rious time, praying every night for Mom. Davy." This year she won't have any letter. let-ter. But she's got that one safe. This list of the normal cares and i duties of a good mother could go on for several columns, before we come to the emergencies and great occasions that make special demands de-mands on her; events like Christmas, Christ-mas, parties, illnesses, accidents, moves to new neighborhoods, financial finan-cial crises. All these Mother has to meet, and it is upon Mother's attitude atti-tude toward them that the whole family's position depends. For Mother is the family weather-vane. weather-vane. If she is cheerful, if home is a pleasant place to which to return, if she likes her job, then everyone is happy, and the benefit derived by her husband and children from her strength and fineness is beyond all calculating. It will go with those children through every day of their lives. A happy, unburdened, unafraid un-afraid childhood actually means a happy, unafraid life. No money can buy that particular security, but Mother and only Mother can give Outwardly drudgery, her busy, self-sacriflcing, tiring days. But inwardly in-wardly they are filled with that glory glo-ry that comes to human beings who are living their destined lives to the full. The second phase of a mother's life is the hard one. All through her girlhood and young woman-hood and proud maturity she has been hearing hear-ing that there is agony ahead; the agony of having the children grow up, become independent select their own mates and go into the world to live their own lives. But that is a pain that must be experienced to be appreciated. The children simply don't need her any more. She can't quite believe be-lieve it! The tumbled beds and tumbled tum-bled heads, the torn frocks and cut fingers, the Christmas surprises and vacation trips, the young, sweet faces pressed against hers, the languid lan-guid small hand of the little convalescent con-valescent reaching for her own all gone! Empty rooms in her house. "Tom's room, the girls' room." |