happy mom’s day

For Mother’s Day special sections, the News-Times invited area students to write an essay about their mom (or a woman who acts like a mom to them). We hoped to have enough submissions to fill a few pages. The essays began trickling in a week or two before the deadline. As the deadline neared, a deluge of essays descended – enough to fill several pages — and all of it needed to be copied into the computer.
Typing the handwritten essays for publication was my responsibility. Looking at the stack of papers and the nearness of the deadline, I gasped, “I need help!” A co-worker grabbed a bundle of pages and we began. Meeting the deadline gave me a legitimate excuse to hang around late enough to experience nightlife at the newspaper where a heard of dying computers repeatedly crashed as deadlines crept ever closer.
With my deadline looming over me, I became a permanent, non-responsive fixture at the computer: Frantically translating childish handwriting, printing and hieroglyphics for publication. My fingers kept typing even after I collapsed into bed.
As I typed, the perfectly formed cursive letters and neatly written block letters, such as I will never be able to make impressed me. A child’s audacious personality spoke to me wit the strong heavy strokes of letters pressing deeply into the lined pages. Lightly written, tiny cursive script reminded me that I have the eyes of a grandmother. It is time to buy another pair of reading glasses: My last pair was broken when a grandbaby either plopped down on them and pulled them open one time too many.
As my c-worker and I worked, we shared short quips. She was especially touched by an essay of a child who lived with the grandmother because “my mom and dad didn’t want me.” Such painful insights of the harshness of life revealed in one short sentence written in childish handwriting. One phrase caught me by surprise, especially the number of times I saw it repeated as the opening reason, “My mom is special because she brought me into this world.”
The references to “a special day with my mom” were especially poignant. One child wrote at length about a day when with an earache when mom stayed home to play nurse. Little girls wrote about “just us girls having fun”: Going shopping, laying back and watching movies. One mom took her daughter to watch a beauty pageant at a hotel in Hot Springs. The boys wrote about their mother’s playing ball with them, taking them fishing and buying stuff they really did not need. A handful mentioned their father’s impact on their lives along with their mother’s.
It isn’t easy for an adult, let alone a child, to explain why their mother is special. Many said their gifts, toys and daily provisions were tangible evidence of the mother’s loving care.
A few creative children drew pictures of their mothers or a loving hart. Others carefully headlined their essay: “BEST MOM” or “MY MOM” or “HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY.” which is the wish my numb fingers hope every Union County mother has as she enjoys reading the children’s essays.