MOTHER'S DAY
TALK--MAY 12, 2002, ARVADA 6TH WARD
I missed the last three days of school the year I was in
the 4th grade because I got the mumps.
What a devastation! All the fun
stuff was happening, and I was missing it while stuck in bed in my bedroom
which was darkened during the day with the shades pulled--the old-fashioned way
of recouperation because the thought at that time was bright light could hurt
the patient's eyes. My mother always let
us have her delicate blown glass cup and carafe full of ice water on the
dresser to quench our thirst when hot and feverish. We weren't even allowed to
get up and eat at the table with the family.
My mother served our meals in by our bedside, fussing over us by using a
clean dish towel to cover the chair and then pulling it up to the side of the
bed if we were too sick to sit up. Or if
we were well enough to sit up, she would cover the painted green wooden tray
with a clean cloth and serve our meal to us in that fashion. This illness was no exception to those
rules. The first few days I felt pretty
sick, and the bed was a comfort. But after the fever and discomfort subsided,
the days dragged by. The shades could
finally be left up, and I saw those beautiful May days slipping by while I was
still confined to my bed. I remember
reading about one Nancy Drew mystery book a day. Then even that favorite pastime became
boring.
My mother came to the bedroom door one
afternoon and said I could go into the dining room where she was sewing. What a treat!
It was like walking into the house after a long vacation--everything was
familiar, but it seemed strange, too.
The dining room tablecloth was off, and stacked on the table were all
kinds of fabric scraps which my mother had cut into various sized circles. Then
she sewed around the outside of each one with a basting stitch on the sewing
machine, instructing me to pull the threads carefully so the gathers came
together into a bunch making a little pouch.
When all the circles were gathered, we flattened each one and layered
them into four short stacks and four stacks each a little taller. We were making clowns! I don't know where she got the idea, Relief
Society maybe or maybe she had made them some other time, but we threaded
through each stack with colored yarn. At
the bottom she knotted the end with a pompom.
After the body was put together she made the heads, complete with
pointed hats all out of fabric. Lastly,
she embroidered funny little faces on each one.
Hers she made look mischievous.
Mine was just cute.
I still have those little clowns in my
cedar chest. I never see them or think
of them without thinking of how special my mother could make some
experiences--even a common childhood illness.
She was so thoughful of our feelings and sensitive to our pint-sized needs. It seemed like weeks before I was well enough
to be able to resume the summer life of a ten year old. It probably wasn't too many days, yet I recall fondly how we listened to the baseball
game broadcast over the radio each afternoon.
She had liked Babe Ruth. And
though he had been dead many years, I decided my favorite team was the New York
Yankees in spite of the fact I was from
a small town on the windy plateaus of south-central Wyoming
I don't remember any other time that we
did either of those activities again. It
doesn't matter. The memories of those
days have become for me the epitome of
my mother's greatness. They have etched
a lasting impression of the uniqueness of how she magnified her calling as a
mother.
Brother Palmer asked me to speak this
morning about some of the attributes of my mother, how I have appreciated and
emulated those in my life, and then expres how I can pass that legacy of
teachings onto others.
Maude Marie Crane Huggins was 43 when I
was born, the youngest in a family of eight girls and one boy. Though I knew her only for less than half of
her life, still those characteristics I remember are the hallmarks of her
entire life.
First and foremost, my mother was a
lady in every sense of the word. That
she had refinement was something I took for granted until at age 12 or 13 one
of my friends pointed that out to me.
Then I began to notice that she was always particular about her own
appearance, her conversation, and her
way of doing things. We always had a cloth on the table for meals, and the food
was always in serving dishes with the proper serving spoon, no bottles of
dressing or pans on the table ever. My
mother had great dignity even when ill and in the hospital. She walked with her
head up, never down--a fine carriage, and always sat as a lady with her ankles
crossed and her hands folded in her lap.
I can’t think of a time I ever saw her without a hanky. She was even buried with one in her
hands. When cleaning she did not look
grubby. And when she went out--for any
reason--her hair was combed and she had on appropriate attire for the
occasion.
My mother made sure her girls didn't go
out looking tacky either. She always
rinsed our hair until it was squeaky clean so it would shine with natural highlights. We had Sunday best clothes, second best
clothes, school clothes, and old work clothes.
And we had to change our clothes after church and school so we didn't
wear the right clothes at the wrong time and shorten their life through
carelessness. No pins either, and definitely no holes--what would people think
if we were in an accident and we had holes in our underwear.
My mother was an outstanding homemaker.
She could make a tasty meal out of "nothing" as easily as she could
cook a bounteous feast. She was an
excellent seamstress--the original kind who didn't need a Simplicity or Vogue
pattern to make attractive clothes. Her
talent was to look in the pattern books and adapt those pictures to patterns
she already had--or make patterns out of brown paper sacks she held up to our
bodies--turning out a finished product that was both professional and
prize-worthy. She was a creative sewer
and could take a used garment and make a brand new one out of the best parts of
it. She made white blouses out of men's
white shirts, a jumper and coat with yellow taffeta lining for me out of my
brother-in-law's wool Navy dress blues he'd worn in the military. Underwear, outerwear, she sewed
everything--including exquisite wedding dresses. My mother had an attention to detail observed
only in the best of seamstresses. The
inside of the garment was as nicely finished as the outside. Plaids and stripes were always perfectly
matched, seams precise as gauged by her eye and not by any line on the throat
plate of the sewing machine. Hems and
facings were done evenly with care, too, so everything was perfect. Many summers she won blue ribbons at the
county fair for both cooking and sewing.
Being a good hostess was also one of
her attributes. She always made people
feel welcome and that she had nothing better to do than visit with them or fix
them a meal or a place to sleep--stangers included who often came as a result
of the highways through Rawlins being closed because of blizzards.
Our home also reflected my mother's
cleanliness. She taught us to respect
our material possessions and treat our home with care. One of her sayings was, "Clean the
corners first, and then you'll be sure to want to clean the middle,
too." We were instructed to make
the beds in such a way so that when we stood at the door of the room, we could
be proud of our efforts and not embarrassed.
She never left dirty dishes on the table or in the sink no matter how
small a snack even, except once that I can remember. It was the Sunday I was baptized. When we got
up from dinner and left the dishes to go to my baptism, I knew it must be a
pretty important occasion.
My mother was a peacemaker. She sacrificed her own health, comfort and
wants to keep peace in the family and make others happy. Even
in her last illness, her concern was for the nurses and for her family
rather than for herself. She was a quiet
disciplinarian. We only needed a gentle
pat on the knee or a subtle shake of her head to let us know we were in error
at church or otherwise in public. At
home she used the time-out chair long before it came in vogue with child
psychologists. But it was for an hour of quiet thought that we sat there and
not a minute for each year of age like nowdays.
Never did my mother use crude or vulgar
language. Never ever did she condescend
to listen to anything off-color. She
abhorred gossiping, and never ever succumbed to that temptation either. Instead she always made sure she pointed out
something good in that person. We
usually hated to have her do that, because if we were out for blood our
accusations fell flat. She had a genuine
concern for others and their feelings.
Particularly her sons-in-law whom she always championed. Even if we were right in what we were
complaining about, that fussing fell on deaf ears as she recounted all the good
qualities of that daughter's husband.
Needless to say, those mother-in-law jokes never applied to her. Her sons-in-law loved and revered her as
dearly as they did their own mothers.
My mother was a friend to her
children. She played paper dolls on the
floor with us, joked with us, and made candy on Sunday night after Sacrament
meeting with us while we played Chinese checkers or read. She rocked us and bathed u s while telling us
stories about her childhood and she often sang songs that became our favorites
even though some were sad songs and made us cry like "Poor Babes in the
Wood". Ordinary times became
special, almost like a party, when she cut the sandwiches for an everyday lunch
into fancy shapes or pulled out a treat of jelly beans or mints from some
secret hiding place. When I was a
teenager, it was my house all the girls in the ward wanted to come to and there
were many, many impromtu slumber parties which always ended the next morning
with a delicious pancake or waffle breakfast.
Reverence was one of her sterling
qualities--reverence for her temple garments so that as I saw her treatment of
them I could hardly wait to go to the temple so I could wear them. Reverence
for the Sabbath. It was a quiet day that
reflected a true change of activities from every other day of the week
including that we wore a dress all day long, second best after we changed our
Sunday clothes. Saturday was spent
preparing for Sunday--just like the Primary song. It was Sunday that I was most homesick of all
when I went away to college. Reverence
for new life. She was excited, not only
when her own babies and grandchildren were expected and subsequently born, but
she was also excited for the new babies in the ward, too. She often said it was unthinkable to be cross
or impatient with such tender new beings entrusted to us by the Lord.
I learned the Old Testatment Bible
stories from my mother. She taught me to
memorize the books of the Old Testatment while drying the silverware. She was my Jr. Sunday School teacher for a
number of years. But it was her calling
as ward organist that taught me the most.
She was also the 9th but in a family of 13. There wasn't a lot of money
so it was her older sister who had the opportunity to take piano lessons. Then her sister would teach my mother when
she got home from the lesson. Just about
the time she was 14 her father said they finally had enough money for her to
take lessons, but he died before the teacher had received the music book he had
sent for to New York City to teach her out of. No
money. No lessons. However, she
continued to practice and over time became the ward organist serving in that
capacity for over 50 years and finally realized her dream of taking lessons the
year before I went to Kindergarten. My
father's birthday present to my mother that year was a year of organ lessons in
the Assembly Hall on Temple Square with Dr. Frank Asper, one of the Tabernacle
organists. She and I would board the train in Rawlins every Tuesday night at
midnight, ride the train all night to Salt Lake City, where we would arrive in
time the next morning to walk up the street to Temple Square for her 9 AM
lesson for three hours. Then we would
window shop--and sometimes have a 5 cent donut hot out of the donut machine at
W.T. Grant's or on rare occasions lunch at the counter at Walgreen’s--before
walking back to the train station and boarding the train at 5 PM for the return
trip to Rawlins. It wasn’t until much
later I learned that she often had only the dollar my dad would slip to her as
we boarded the train. During the week
after the lesson, she would finish all her daytime chores before walking to the
chapel about 9 PM and practicing until midnight to make sure she did the three
hours practice each day that her teacher expected. Her gratitude for that blessing of organ
lessons was reflected in the way she played.
There was a rare quality of devotion that sounded in almost every hymn.
My mother's love for the gospel was
always evident. She was the RS president
when I was born and for many years after.
Her stories of those sisters she
served--and mentored--have always been an invaluable resource for my own
service in my church callings. She could
be counted on because she was willing to do the thankless jobs. She always said she was a work horse who
could plod on day after day doing what needed to be done when it needed to be
done, not a prancing pony who could do fancy stuff but soon tired and moved
onto something prettier. Her willingness to go the extra mile was never
something she vocalized, but one we saw demonstated over and over and over.
I learned about dignity of person,
reverence, the attributes of service and friendship, charity and unconditional
love from my mother--very little of it through sermons or formal instruction
but from her person because she lived that way every day. That my mother was a good teacher is
evidenced by the fine examples she set for her daughters, who in turn have used
those examples to serve others in many capacities both in and out of the
church. Whether it was homemaking skills
or how to play a hymn the proper way or prepare reflective prelude music for
the organ my mother had a great deal of influence over the way I do things. I
called on her ability to “use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without”
when cash was short and needs were long with my children.
My mother was a woman for all
seasons. She set the tone for the family
and left a legacy of memories and teachings that I will always cherish. In this day and age when women are intent on
making their mark in the world, it was a privilege to know that I had as my
mother a woman who guided the destinies of, not one or two, but nine children. Her influence, or mark, will be felt for generations
to come as I emulate those same sterling qualities she mentored for me.
I close with verses from Proverbs
31........which must have been my mother's guide, whether she knew it or not.
Proverbs 31
10 ¶ Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies.
The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil.
She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.
She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands...
She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens...
She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms.
She perceiveth that her merchandise is good: her candle goeth not out by night.
She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff.
She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy.
She is not afraid of the snow for her household: for all her household are clothed with scarlet.
She maketh herself coverings of tapestry; her clothing is silk and purple...
Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come.
She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness.
She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.
Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her.
Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all.
I will be forever proud to say--"She was my mother!"
In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
