My earliest memory of my mother goes back to 1949. Picture Ralph Kramden’s apartment in the Honeymooners.  That was our neighborhood.  It was a hot summer in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. If it was in August, my birthday being August 30th, I would have been just shy of my third birthday.  We had just returned from the fish market where my mother had purchased a handsome fish which was neatly wrapped in waxed butcher paper tied with a string.  Just before we reached our apartment building, my mother met some ladies, she stopped and became engaged in a friendly and lengthy conversation.  She must have been concerned that standing on the sidewalk in the sun, on a hot summer’s day was not good for her fresh fish and asked me to take it inside and “put it by the door”.  I set it down by the door and came back out to sit on the stoop and wait for my mother to finish her visit- It must have been 15 or 20 minutes before we all went in, went to our door which (I believe was on the third or fourth floor) and my mother said “where is the fish?” Didn’t you bring the fish in, and put it by the door, like I asked you? All the doors in a Brooklyn apartment are identical (except for numbers) and remember I was just shy of three years old.  The door beneath us on the lower landing looked just like our door. And we all went down one flight of stairs, my mother leading the way.  A neighbor’s door was open, we smelled fish.  She rang the bell anyway, "did you see a fish out here?"  The neighbor was holding a frying pan with our fish in it. " I found it by my door, It was like a miracle," he said.  Needless to say we did not have fish that evening.  One boy’s mistake was another man’s miracle. That was not my last mistake, I made many more “mistakes” after that but my mother was patient, loving and kind.  I wish I could give her a hug, on this Mother’s day and say thank you.

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Mothers have the greatest and hardest job in the world. There is no other enterprise on earth that can compare to the importance of the product they produce. There is no other industry outside the mysteries of heaven that is more vital to national defense than motherhood. While Baltimore was on fire, erupting in riots, and rocks were raining down on the police force, the Governor and Mayor were arguing about jurisdiction and authority, and if the National Guard should be deployed. Teenagers, outraged by a sense of injustice in the death of another black man in police custody, and whipped into a frenzy by community disorganizers, anarchists, and agitators, – erupted in an explosion of rage. The ‘authorities’ were back on their heels.
Something happened in the midst of the chaos. One mother (one authority) recognized her son in the midst of the mob, face masked, with a brick in his hand. Forget the National Guard, forget the Highway Patrol, forget the Marines, a mother’s love kicked into action- not to save the world, or Baltimore, but to save her son. She physically disciplined her flesh and blood as a lioness would cuff an unruly cub on the Serengeti. Earlier in the day, she warned him not to join the mayhem, and he promised he wouldn’t. He broke his promise. Spotting him, she waded into the madness and brought one child to his senses, and brought him home.
Where were all the other mother’s, the defenders and keepers of the home? God bless the mother that rises up to stand in the gap, “to train up a child in the way that he should go, that when he is old he should not depart from it”? Mothers have been doing that since the beginning of time.
Forget, nuclear missiles or Abram’s Tanks, what America needs is an army of Mothers who rise up as instruments of God, to save one soul at a time. America needs a revival, a revival of motherhood. America needs godly mothers. Not Hip-Hop mothers, not Hollywood mothers, not Cosmopolitan Magazine mothers, but God fearing mothers, spiritual Tiger-mom mothers, and god-loving lionesses mothers who not only know God, but realized that motherhood is the hand of God in every civilized neighborhood. -id

Mother Love...

Before she held you in her arms, she held you in her heart.
She felt you kick and move around, the first time, with a ‘start.’
She prayed for you, chose pink or blue, she laughed and also cried.
Sometimes she went through hell for you, in childbirth almost died.
Then at last, she held you fast, and laid you on her breast;
there’s no one who cared more for you, or wished for you the best.
When you were sick, with worried look, she felt your fevered brow.
She made things work, like miracles, to this day you don’t know how.
She somehow mended and made ends meet
prepared your very favorite, called you in to eat.
She watched you grow, and then to go- off to school or war;
then she prayed each day, she'd see your face once more
She, the first to mention Him high who reigns above.
who gave you your first glimpse of Him, in a mother's love. - id