Jill's Journal: Where have all the flowers gone?

As I sat in church on Mother’s Day, I looked around at all of the mothers in the pews. There were many of them. Young and old. Some with their families, some sitting beside a spouse or a friend. And some were all alone.

This being the first Mother’s Day without my Mom, I found myself feeling a bit sorry for myself. For the first time, I had no reason to browse through the rack of Mother’s Day cards in search of the perfect card. And for the first time in years, I didn’t select the “perfect” pot of flowers to hang outside near the door to her home.

Instead, I simply thought of her and of all the Mother’s Days we’ve celebrated together, of the laughs we had at her kitchen table over a cocktail or two or the frustrations of missing a turn on an unfamiliar road on our way home from a family vacation. We may have done that a time or two.

I thought of the matching mom and daughter shirts that she once sewed for us and the feeling of the cold metal scissors she used to “trim my bangs” the night before school pictures were taken.

I thought of how she drove my brother and I around town in search of a kite or two that slipped out our grasp and the days when she made homemade bread and buns and cinnamon rolls. The house always smelled so good and even better with a slather of butter and a glass of cold milk.

I recalled the thought I would put into the gifts I bought for her for Mother’s Day, her birthday, Christmas and just because. And I thought of the Mother’s Day corsages “we bought” courtesy of my Dad and the $10 spot he’d take from his wallet.

“Go get your mother a flower,” he’d tell me.

That was the usual procedure for her birthday and Christmas gifts, too. 

As I looked around, there was not a single corsage on any of the mothers in church on Mother’s Day. 

“Where have all the flowers gone?” I thought to myself, bringing to mind by Pete Seeger’s song by the same name.

Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing.
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time ago.
Where have all the flowers gone?
The girls have picked them every one.
Oh, when will you ever learn?
Oh, when will you ever learn?

Perhaps Mother’s Day corsages have become a thing of the past, traded in for more modern-day trinkets. Perhaps they are now just special memories of a simpler time and the special women in all of our lives, our Moms.