a story of respect and appreciation for mothers
The woman, slowed only by some pain in her aging knees, reaches her intended destination where she hooks her cane onto a fence wire.
She takes up her hoe and lovingly begins doting on the plants in her little sanctuary, moving a little dirt here, readjusting a trellis there. The sunlight filters through the trees, and she allows it to warm her bones.
After a time, she is amiably joined by a small boy. Together they make a curious team: an old, slow work-worn grandma and a tottery little fellow basking in her loving company, absorbing all that she has to teach him.
She reaches for a potato fork and begins to pierce the ground, turning over rich brown earth. The small boy rushes to wrap his chubby little hands around the golden brown potatoes that turn up. Each new discovery is marked by their shared exuberance. Soon they have a bowl brimful of new potatoes with bits of earth still clinging to them.
That done, she exchanges her hoe for her cane again; she fastens the bit of baling twine to secure the fence against bunnies and wayward cows and slowly wends her way back across the yard to her airy kitchen where she will turn freshly dug potatoes into a mouthwatering meal.
She is a woman of eighty years, the upper tier of a multigenerational farm family. She herself is intimately acquainted with years of honest toil like her mother before her.
Her ready smile draws the younger members of her family that happen to pass nearby to a seat beside her on her porch as she quite effortlessly demonstrates how to avoid an idle hand while lending a listening ear.
To ask her, she would consider herself unremarkable. The people around her know that she certainly is remarkable as they witness her visiting those of her friends and family to whom age has not been as kind.
She blesses and inspires so many people by her gratefulness and passion even as her age closes in on her year by year.
About the Author: Colleen Yoder is a farm wife, mother, and grandmother of rural Wayne County, Ohio. She learns much by teaching her own children and also by observing her very fascinating mother-in-law with whom she shares a yard.
Respect and Appreciation for Mothers
Please share your thoughts in the comment box below…
In general, do you notice much respect and appreciation for mothers in our culture?
Or, do you think respect and appreciation for mothers is lacking today?
Click here for ways to honor your mother, even if she is gone.
