We just celebrated one of the most cherished holidays in our society, Mother’s Day.
This day has been celebrated since May 12, 1907, when Anne Jarvis organized groups to promote friendship and health on this date with a memorial in her mother’s home church in Grafton, West Virginia. Within five years every state in the nation was celebrating on this day, and President Woodrow Wilson made it a national holiday, the second Sunday in May.
That’s only 114 years we have celebrated Mother’s Day as a national holiday.
I can remember my great-great and great-grandmothers would have been older than 114, so does that mean they were not recognized with a day? I don’t think so.
They maybe didn’t have a national holiday, but I cannot help but believe that all mothers have been recognized throughout the years as the rock that anchors the family, the sounding post of many young children, the co-leader along with the husband in settling disputes and working through difficulties. She has born children and, as my grandmother has told me, went right back to all her duties and obligations the next day. We have always been a strong lot, have we not?
Mothers, I have read, were made by God because he could not always be there, and he needed the next best thing. Mothers are drivers, coaches, doctors, lawyers, chefs, negotiators, referees, builders of forts, soft laps, and give even softer hugs and squeezes. We fill the needs of our children no matter what. And have you ever seen or perhaps been one of the “grizzly bear” mothers? The mother that goes into defense – fight mode when their offspring is threatened? Then we turn into a big fighting machine. We can go from loving to combat mode in a split second. We wear many hats and can change that hat when the need arises. We are resilient, durable, spirited, feisty, quick to recover and pliable.
Mothers are the matriarch of our families. Daddies are the worker bees, but we are the queen bees the workers provide for and protect. My Mother’s Day was different this year as I am still wheelchair bound, but all my little worker bees prepared Mother’s Day Dinner for me, and we celebrated this Queen Bee in style.
We had some delicious baked beans made by one of my Daughters in Love. Here is my “add-ons” to a simple can of baked beans.
Baked Beans
6 slices of cooked diced bacon
1 finely chopped onion
2 (28-ounce) baked beans
½ cup ketchup
3 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons spicy brown mustard
3 tablespoons molasses
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
Stir all into beans and mix really well. I cook mine in cast iron skillet for 1 hour at 350 degrees.
