The special day for mothers comes around every May, although in Israel it has been replaced by something called Family Day, on an ambiguous date that seems to differ with everyone you ask.
According to Google, Mother’s Day is still widely observed on the second Sunday in May – in more than 51 countries, including the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand; most European countries, South Africa and India, China and Japan. In Arab countries, it is observed on March 21 – the vernal equinox.
But whenever May comes around, bringing with it masses of wonderful flowers in bloom, I remember my mother even more strongly than usual. But who needs a Mother’s Day to appreciate the woman who gave us life?
My own mother died in 1974, yet she is always with me. Now that I am old myself, I see her in the mirror. I try to keep her memory alive even with my grandchildren, who never knew her.
She was a wonderful woman – not sophisticated, but loving and tender and funny. When she was young, at the turn of the 20th century, girls were not given much education, but I think, if she’d had that advantage, she could have gone far, especially as a writer. That gift she passed on to me, along with her sense of humor, her love of books and children, music and flowers – her capacity for appreciation was boundless.
SARAH REBECCA OPAS born in Australia in 1889 to Polish immigrants, was known to all as “Becky.” Her life was not easy, and I was born during the Depression of the early ’30s, the fifth child.
My father struggled financially like everyone else. She would have loved to take a job as “a lady in a flower shop,” but my chauvinistic dad always declared: “No wife of mine is going out to work!” as she slaved away cooking tasty meals from cheap ingredients, doing the laundry in an old-fashioned copper, and raising a big family.
My greatest treat as a child was when my mother would take me to the local town hall for community singing. The words of all the songs were up on a screen, and everyone would sing along. I felt so close to my mother then and thought she was the most wonderful woman in the world.
Although she’d had only eight years of schooling, she was wise from the lessons of life. Mother of five, with little in the way of worldly possessions, she nevertheless created a haven for us where we all felt safe. She taught us honesty and decency, morality and ambition. She never laughed at our dreams, but tried to help us make them come true.
I have some earrings that were my mother’s. They are made only of colored glass, but whenever I wear them, I find myself smiling.
She had so little in her lifetime. Her old-fashioned kitchen in Melbourne’s seaside suburb of St. Kilda sported none of the appliances we take for granted today. No refrigerator, but an old ice chest. A man with a horse and cart used to deliver blocks of ice that cost one shilling, twice a week. No washing machine, but a big copper with a mangle and scrubbing board.
Monday was always washing day, and I can still smell the wonderful fragrance of clean sheets billowing on the line in the sun and wind. The clotheslines were held up with a wooden prop.
The big event in my life was when we got a telephone, just in time for my teenage years, but I was strictly limited to how often I could use it, and for how long I could talk.
There was no television, of course, but we had a wireless and the whole family would gather around it each night for our favorite serial, Dad and Dave. Then, late at night there was that scary program The Witches’ Hour.
Hardly a day goes by on which I don’t think of her in some context. I have taught my grandchildren the songs and nursery rhymes she taught me. In the food I cook from her recipes, I still taste the flavor of love. I find myself using expressions that were hers, and see her image when I look in the mirror.
Life moves on. Everything changes. We travel the world, change countries. We achieve things she never dreamed of. Yet what always remains constant is a mother’s love.
When she died, I wrote her the following poem, titled “My Mother Remembered”:
No great intellectual she,
But a wisdom fashioned
From years of living, tempered with compassion
And understanding.
I am what she made me,
Gently moulding the woman I became.
I write, because of stories
She told me sitting by the fire,
Seeing pictures in the coals.
I laugh, because of jokes
That quickly dried a child’s tears.
I love, because her heart
Overflowed with tenderness.
She never sought to hold me,
Always willing to sever the chord
And let me go.
How strange she was the one to leave,
And I – all unprepared –
Must journey on alone.
The writer is the author of 14 books. dwaysman@gmail.com