I have a friend whose parents after their children were grown, moved to northern Mississippi to work a small farm. The daily life of raising cattle, working fields, keeping vegetable and flower gardens keeps them busy from before light until after dark. The bounty produced by their hard work they share with everyone. My friend never returns home from a visit without jars of put up vegetables and fruits, preserves, pickles and an ever rotating blessing of whatever is coming in season in their garden. Her mother's appreciation for the value of fresh food, simply prepared, has passed along to my friend, who has become a wonderful gourmet cook.
On one visit to the farm not long after she was married, my friend had one of those very special moments that has lingered with her long after it happened. It seems her anticipation of a few days away from the stress of her high powered job, not to mention the luxury of sleeping late went unrealized when early, early her first morning there, her mother woke her by calling insistently for her from the kitchen. Thinking something was wrong, she wrestled herself from the warm covers, grabbed a blanket to throw around her shoulders and took off in her bare feet towards her mother's voice.
To her surprise, there was no emergency, only her mother, knife in hand, standing quietly over the freshly opened carcass of a chicken. Her answer to her daughters grumpy questioning of why she needed her, was to tell her she wanted to show her something in what remained of her favorite blue laying hen, a casualty of her husband's tractor in the dim light of morning.
The sadness in her voice and the evidence of the law of the farm flooded the kitchen and silenced her daughter's protests. "She was one of my best layers," said her mother with admiration and respect. Nothing is wasted on a good farm, so favorite hen or not, even in her death she had still not out lived her usefulness. But before this happened, her sturdy little hen body lay on the altar of the farm kitchen as an offering and acknowledgement of something far more nourishing than a farm meal. "Look", her mother said reverently to her daughter as she opened the hen's cavity. "I want you to see this. Here are her ovaries and look, here are all the eggs she will ever lay, all lined up, ready for their turn. And see? here, are the eggs she would have laid this morning. Look at how beautiful all of this is! Here in this little blue hen is something incredible that so few people ever get to see. Here is the mystery of life right here in front of us."
And so it was. A mother and her favorite blue hen, the victim of untimely circumstance it would seem, and yet somehow something more. Perhaps it was her Mom's way of honoring this little hen which had given her such pleasure and also a way of saying to her daughter, look and remember, we are all, all of us together on this quiet frosty morning, part of something wondrous and precious.
Not all mother's are so attuned, or so observant. Not all daughters are so fortunate. On this Mother's Day, this seems such a beautiful tribute to what it means to be a woman and a mother. Beyond the beauty of their relationship is the recognition of what we really celebrate on this Sunday in May. We are honoring the foundation of our lives. We are honoring the beautiful, powerful and mysteriously creative nature of womanhood. No matter the kind of mother we had, we exist in this world because of them. For some, it is the only gift they can provide. For others, it becomes something far more. But from both, the blessing of our life remains. We are here because of them and that simple truth can make room in every heart, for gratefulness.
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