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A Mother’s Day Blessing

Dear Lord,

Today we come to you and ask you to bless the mothers. 

Bless the mothers who are in this very room – the mothers of fresh little babies, wiggling in their arms and bouncing on their hips. The mothers of teenagers who are growing taller by the day. The mothers of grown children who are raising families of their own. May they know how much they are loved. 

Bless the mothers who are not with us today. The mothers who are taking care of loved ones. The mothers who are no longer able to venture out of their homes. The mothers who have responsibilities that carry them away from us. May they know how much they are loved. 

Bless the mothers who live around us and who we see every day. Bless the mothers who are far from us, who we will never meet. Bless the mothers who speak beautiful languages other than ours. Bless the mothers who live in large and expensive homes and the mothers who live in one room houses with dirt floors. Bless the mothers of our world, Lord. May they know how much they are loved. 

Bless the mothers who work in an office, the mothers who work at home, the mothers who farm land all day, the mothers who teach in classrooms, the mothers who work non-stop to keep everything going. Bless the single mothers, the mothers who live in affluence, the mothers who live in poverty. Bless the mothers who have worries larger than some of us may ever know. Bless the mothers who have children with special needs, the mothers watching over their children in a hospital bed, the mothers who are also their child’s nurse and constant caregiver. May they know how much they are loved. 

And finally, we ask that You bless the mothers who are hurting. Bless the mothers who are waiting to become a mom one day, the mothers whose children are now with You, the mothers who are motherless, the mothers who grieve for lost children. Bless the mother’s who have a mother’s heart – who poured their lives into other people’s children even though they had no children of their own. May they know how much they are loved. 

Lord, give these mothers Your blessing today and all the days. May every single mother know she is seen by You, that her prayers are heard by You, that she is tenderly held by You, and loved by You, the Mother and Father of us all. 

Amen. 

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No Mere Mortal

My Grandmother is famous for many things. Like her bad habit of hiding Christmas presents around the house as she buys them throughout the year, only to forget about them in December and requesting that the family go on a scavenger hunt to find the lost items. 

Or the way she would drive pell-mell all over the counties of Mississippi, braking with her left foot and flooring it with her right, her small frame barely reaching over the giant steering wheel. My grandfather taught her to drive after they were married, and she never quite mastered the finer points of, let’s say, steering and stopping and turning. The story goes that one time she came home with only 3 out of the 4 hubcaps on her Pontiac. She insisted to everyone that she had no clue where the hubcap could have dropped off, while my grandfather insisted that she had to have hit something to knock it off. After several weeks, the missing hubcap was discovered by my grandfather next to a dented guardrail. He proudly brought it home and nailed it to a tree – a little monument to my grandmother’s driving skills that she had to see every time she looked out the kitchen window. 

Or the time she decided to serve tacos for our Christmas meal because she was tired of ham and turkey. 

Or how she would stick little sandwich bags of cash in the freezer for safe keeping. 

Or her many margarine dishes in the fridge that contained everything but margarine. 

But probably the thing she is most famous for, amongst all family members and at least three neighboring counties, are her biscuits. 

Handmade, crispy on the bottom, flaky on the top, melt in your mouth biscuits. 

“Biscuits in the well” is what she calls them and I can’t remember a day I didn’t love them. When I was a child visiting her house, I would wake up in the mornings to sounds of laughter and conversation floating from the kitchen. I would sit up from my lumpy pallet on the floor, crawl over all the twisted limbs and tangled heads of cousins sleeping next to me, and sniff the air greedily. Biscuits. 

Still half asleep, I would shuffle my feet on the dusty, tan linoleum floor and make my way to the kitchen. An oval wooden table with a dozen chairs, none matching, but somehow all looking like they belonged there, would greet me. And there would be my grandmother, standing in front of the sink, hands deep in flour and oil, rolling out biscuits. Her apron would be covered in grease stains and fresh flour. She would still be wearing her night dress. Aunts, uncles, neighbors and sometimes strangers would be sitting at the table. Newspapers were spread out, debates were in full swing, a dog would be barking, and a baby would be banging on the table with tiny fists. 

The biscuits would be baking on cast iron sheet pans, so heavy mere mortals could not lift them out of the oven. But somehow my Grandmother could do it. Probably because she is no mere mortal. 

As soon as a fresh batch would make it out of the oven, hands would grab for them. Eating them hot was always the best, but they tasted just fine when they were cold. Or even better crumbled up in a glass of milk for supper. 

Those biscuits fed babies and old men. They fed wanderers who were just sleeping over on their way to another destination. They fed good friends. They fed people who had grown up on that very soil in rural Mississippi and they fed internationals who had never stepped foot on American dirt before. They fed rich, poor, black, white, believers and doubters. They fed anyone who was invited to the table, which was exactly everyone. 

If I had to stop and guess, I think those biscuits made it into the hands of more people than can fit into the LSU stadium. I speculate that thousands of humans on this earth have enjoyed hot biscuits rolled by my Grandmother’s hands and plopped onto cast iron sheet pans.

Now that I’ve reached the ripe old age of 42, I’ve been thinking a lot about changing the world. What happened to that young girl who was so eager to make a difference? She was going to set out to do something BIG. What has she done at all to improve this place? Does a mortgage and a dented Mom Car count? 

And then I think about my Grandmother. Covered in flour and standing in front of a sink, wearing an old night dress and rolling biscuits by hand. 

She changed the world with a pan of biscuits. 

I’m sure she never set out to have her biscuits be life-changing. All she wanted was to provide a meal for the people she loved. But somewhere in those biscuits she discovered the secret for changing the world. And it’s been there the whole time, the secret staring at me, ready for me to discover it too. 

Maybe I don’t need to start a revolution. Maybe I don’t need to write the next great American novel or make millions. Maybe all the things I have been chasing don’t really matter at all. Maybe I’ve been too focused on all the wrong things.

Maybe all I need to do to change the world is to offer someone a seat at my table and a pan of biscuits. 

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One Lucky Dog

It’s pathetic, really. The way we gush and carry on over a stray mutt. 

But she’s our stray mutt – and I would argue that she is probably the most well-loved and pampered mutt across this country. Or at least in the southernmost states. 

The vet tells us to make up our own breed for her – she’s one of a kind. Of course, we already knew that. Her fine pedigree causes her hair to be wiry all over, with the exception of the top of her head where a fluff of hair sticks up proudly like a mohawk. Her tail is curled and poised like a show dog’s, but her ears are floppy and too big for her small face. Her chin has gray hair so scraggly and long that it appears she is trying to compete in a goatee contest, and her frame is too small for her tall legs. In other words, she’s perfect. 

Grover Mae doesn’t know how lucky she is, although we try to tell her often. She doesn’t realize that not every dog gets hugs and kisses until it becomes obnoxious. She doesn’t realize that not every dog gets to choose where she will sleep at night – a cozy dog bed nook, or snuggled in between the pillows of a comfy couch, or even better, on top of her human’s legs in a bed that was once only meant for people. She doesn’t realize that not every dog gets a birthday party, complete with a home-made cake and cards. 

No, Grover Mae spends her days happily chasing squirrels and begging for doggie snacks, not once stopping to think about how her life could have been so different. 

If we hadn’t decided to keep her. 

But we did. We couldn’t resist her the day she wandered into our backyard, skinny and shaking. Amelia threw her toddler arms around Grover Mae’s flea infested neck and cried, “Can I keep her?” with all the emotion a little girl can have. We relented to that tiny but strong-willed girl, and bought the dog a blue collar since we knew it was a boy. Hence the name Grover (we later had to feminize it after a quick check from the vet who was disappointed in our knowledge of dog anatomy). And then came the sickness with worms, and even worse, Parvo. And a stay in the doggie ICU. And lots and lots of dollars later. 

Perhaps Grover Mae could have never found our yard that day. And she would be so lonely without us. She would never know the love that comes from somewhere deep down, the love that is shaped out of pure joy and selflessness. She wouldn’t know that she was missing out on all the hugs and kisses and snuggles on the couch. She would never understand all that she was losing by not being with us. 

I tell her all of this as she sits on the couch beside me in the early hours of the morning and I stroke her belly. I tell her how wonderful her life is because we are in it, how lucky she really is that we saved her all those years ago. I tell her that she would be missing so much if she weren’t here and how life is so much better with humans in it. 

She looks up at me with these perfectly round, big brown eyes. She cocks one floppy ear slightly higher than the other. She lets out a little whine to tell me she knows the truth. 

She knows who saved whom all those years ago. She knows who would be so lonely if she had never shown up that day. She knows who the lucky ones are. 

“Good,” I tell her as she settles back down on my lap. “I’m glad we have that straight.”

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