MY MOTHER, MY MODEL, MY MENTOR....

                        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 pray that I may reflect her teachings in my own life so that others will be better for having known me because she regarded her calling as mother to be sacred.

I will be forever proud to say--"She was my mother!"

In the name of Jesus Christ.  Amen.