Cord Byrd: “Sunday, May 13, is Mother's Day. Motherhood and May are a perfect pairing of all that is warm and nurturing. The earth…”

“Sunday, May 13, is Mother's Day. Motherhood and May are a perfect pairing of all that is warm and nurturing. The earth is soft and green, with the buds of new leaves and new life appearing everywhere. Birds fill the air with their love songs and flowers scent the breezes with their soft perfumes. All around us, if we but look, we see the signs of happy motherhood, from the ducklings in a neat line behind their mother on a pond to calves curled up asleep by their mother's feet in deep green pastures. In neighborhood parks, mothers bring their toddlers out to play in the sunshine before their afternoon naps or push sleeping newborns in strollers along shade-dappled paths. In the springtime, the great cycle of life is at its fullest flow. On this one lovely spring Sunday, the Nation heeds the Biblical admonition to 'honor thy mother.' It is an opportunity to make up for those times all year that we may have overlooked our own mother's contributions to our well-being, or snapped at her well-meaning advice and loving attempts to straighten our collars and smooth our hair. Such is the lot of mothers--to be essential but so often unappreciated. Mothers are like water--without a mother, life could not exist, while not enough mothering can stunt growth like a plant in a desert, but too much mothering can be as smothering as floodwaters on a field of corn.”