The Mother's Day
Present I'll Never Forget
Neither time nor death has stilled this message of love from a mother to her daughter
By MARYA SAUNDERS
Mv mother has been dead for 10 years. But I still
get a present from her every Mother's Day."
Each year, I take out a small, and now quite '
worn, plastic record on which is written,
"Mother's Day, 1950." The handwriting is my
mother's. In the grooves of the record is
her voice, and the message is one she sent
me several months before she died. , .
Even though my mother cannot be with
me this Mother's Day, I will feel very
close to her. When I play the record and
hear her words in her own voice, I will
suddenly be surrounded by happy mem
ories and the rare sweet warmth and love
which can only exist in a family.
I did not always feel this way. In 1950, I '
was a young actress newly arrived in New
York from Chicago, trying to launch a career in
television and the theater. At the time, Mother was
seriously ill, but only my father, her doctor, and I
knew how ill. I had come to New York only because she
had insisted on it. We had planned on my trip, and to do oth
erwise would have let her know how hopelessly sick she was.
When the record first came in the mail, I slipped it onto my phonograph
and set the needle. As I listened, tears started to stream uncontrollably down
my face. Mother's soft voice telling of her very great love for me on Mother's Day
was more than I could bear. I switched the record off and cried like a small
child desperately afraid of losing her mother.
A few months later I was able to go home on the pretext of getting a television
job in Chicago. Mother died soon afterward. Grief-stricken, I returned to New
York to work and tried to accept the fact that she was dead.
Many times in the following months, I picked up the last present my mother
had sent and held it in my hands. But I could never summon the courage to
play it The fear of being hurt was too great, and I always put it away again.
In the four years that followed, I tried to block out the pain of my mother's
death. The record with her message was now carefully wrapped in tissue paper
and buried in an old album of records on top of my bookcase. I still had not been
able to listen through to the end of it
Then one early spring evening I was preparing to take an acting job for the
summer in a stock company. A close friend came to help me pack. We had fin
ished dinner, and he was perched on a ladder going through the bookshelves.
"What are you keeping these old records for?" he asked.
' V :
"Oh, those," I answered, trying to ignore the
question, "I want them." I ran to the kitchen to
start washing the dinner dishes.
A minute later, I heard him click on the
phonograph. Then, quite suddenly, my moth
er's voice came from the other room. I heard
her say, "My darling."
I grasped the dish in my hand and ran
over to the phonograph. My friend had
found my old Mother's Day present tucked
away in an album. For an anguished mo
ment I stood over the record ready to turn
it off. But instead, I covered my face with
my hands and listened. " Tears welled in
my eyes. My friend asked very gently,
"Do you want me to turn it off?"
"No, no, I want to hear it all," I answered.
Slowly the tension in my body began to fade.
My mother's voice, which I had not heard for four
years, sounded fresh, alive, and so beautiful. When her
message was over, I started the record again, and this
time I was able to listen to it calmly.
I've played the record often since that day. It is very beautiful
to me now, and each year it becomes more precious. Only two very close
friends of mine have ever heard this record. Her message is one only a mother
could send, and it still makes me blush. But I share it now because it shows
that Mother's Day is really a day when children give themselves a present: we
remind ourselves that we are loved by someone with an infinite capacity for
love, someone who sees us as a person far better than we actually are. Thus we
give ourselves a reason for being better. This is what my mother said:
"My Darling; this is for Mother's Day. I know you will be thinking of me
in terms of our days together and, darling, I want to tell you how grateful I am
to be one of those honored on this day.
"I thank God for the privilege of having contributed to the universe a beau
tiful soul. Thank you, my darling, for your loving thoughts, your honesty, your
insight, your gentle understanding, your compassion for others, your rightmind
edness and for so much beauty which lies beneath the skin.
"I have much to be grateful for, my darling. Your beauty would be a joy to all
those who do not know you. But the soul which animates those features is the
beauty which remains in one's mind and heart. With all my heart, I cherish you,
darling, and once more thank God for the joyous glory He has sent me to merit
the title of Mother. Thank you, darling. God bless you," ' ' '
COVER
This mother-daughter scene, photographed
by Jotef Schneider, it Family Weekly' way
of icuhing "Happy Mother's Day" to Moms
everywhere. For a heart-ioarming story in
remembrance of this special day, tee above.
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