Commemorating Mothers Everywhere

Every year on the second Sunday in the month of May, our country celebrates Mother's Day. It is considered one of the most popular card selling days of the year. It is a time when you cannot walk into a store without feeling the need to buy a card or flower for your Mom.

Years ago when my grandmother was alive, we talked about Mother's Day and what that day meant to her. Her answer surprised me because it was the most selfless answer a mother could give.

Mother's Day was not a day but a life time commitment. So to celebrate motherhood one day a year sounded ridiculous to her. When a woman chooses to bring a baby into this world, she chooses a life time of placing her heart out on the line. She will experience not only the greatest joy of her life, she will also experience the greatest pain of her life. From the time she discovers she is pregnant, her whole world evolves around the tiny life growing within her womb and safely beneath her heart. Everything she does from this point on she questions whether or not it is good for the baby.

In 1914, nine years after Anna Jarvis made a proposal to have a day recognized in honor of her mother's humanitarian efforts, Woodrow Wilson signed a bill and created a national holiday called Mother's Day. It was a day to honor all mothers in all walks of life.

But as my grandmother once told me, Mother's Day was not one day a year but was to be celebrated everyday because once a woman has a child she is a mother for eternity.

And her heart is no longer her own.