This Mother's Day I would sing my song of love and gratitude for you, my daughter.
Sweet is the song you have sung to me throughout the years, not alone on my special day, but on each and every day as it came, not only when I had you at home with me, but in your abundant and fulfilling years since your marriage.
Always your song of laughter and gaiety has echoed through the dark corridors I have walked and lifted my downcast eyes to see the light of hope shining in God's beautiful world. Your song of faith and courage has been my staff on which to lean in my shadowed years, to keep me from sinking into the bitterness of despair. Always, through sunlight and shadows, you have beautified and blessed with your liltingly happy and glad refrains which only the mothers of daughters know.
So from a brimming heart, I sing my song of love in praise of you; in gratitude for the priceless blessings that are mine because of you.
Dear little grown-up girl, listen and hear in this recounting of your song to me, my song for you. Listen, and you will hear the joyous and reverent singing of my heart when you were cradled beneath it; its swelling melody at your first cry--the sweetest music heard. Hear the notes of exultance as you, a perfect little flower of humanity--the live doll for whom I had yearned since a small child--were placed in my waiting arms. Hear the tones of awe and wonder as I watched you growing and made little dresses for you, and curled your hair; as I saw you taking part in Sunday School and Primary, in school programs, in high school and college activities and in Mutual.
Listen and you will hear in my song the added overtones of beauty when you confided to me that the one man had told you of his love. That was when you whispered to me--it was just past midnight and you had wakened me--"Mama, he holds me at my best." Listen, and clarion-clear will come in winging, mounting crescendos the reverence and gratitude, the humility and pride in my soul as I walked with you the temple aisles and saw the wonder on your face and received from your eyes the flash of understanding of all that lay ahead in your never-ending journey of happiness.
Dear, precious girl of mine, can you hear the rapturous lyrics of the stars in my song because of the renewed fulfillment I receive each time you place a new little grandchild in my arms? Now I watch you welcoming and caring for each new baby with a joy which passeth understanding, and you still find the time to go beyond your own walls to serve others of the Master's children, as you grow in sweetness and compassion.
So listen, my daughter, on this Mother's Day, to my song of gratitude in praise of you.
