OPINION | LET'S TALK: Remembering our mothers on special day


  • Wanna buy a new car/But the price ain't right
  • Be a downside cheaper (yes it would)/Start riding a bike
  • They're making milk out of powder/Got the [babies] crying
  • Rich gone up higher/Got the parents lying
  • Lord, its a real mother for ya (yeah) ...
  • — Johnny "Guitar" Watson
  • The love of a mother is the veil of a softer light between the heart and the heavenly Father.
  • — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I appreciated the musical genius of the late Johnny "Guitar" Watson, the singer-songwriter known for the old R&B hit "A Real Mother For Ya." Just as I appreciated the work of the late recording artist Isaac Hayes, whose most famous line from perhaps his most famous hit, the theme song from the original "Shaft" film, was, "They say this cat Shaft is a bad mother — " only to be interrupted by his female backup singers with "Shut your mouth!"

Unfortunately, the line from "Theme from Shaft" was one of my earliest memories of popular-culture use of the word "mother." It was some time later that I found that "Shut your mouth" was an interjected replacement of the second part of the sadly-overused cuss-word name that begins with "mother." Certain well-knowners use the term with such aplomb and eloquence, they're all but admired for how they say it.

When the full "mother ... " term isn't used in adult-language film and small-screen projects, the word "mother" is used alone to imply the term. A case in point: the Ragu Sauce TV commercials in which it's said that someone "cooks like a mother." Said commercials exploit the hip use of an implied profanity while supposedly honoring mothers with the saying that someone cooks like one.

This Mother's Day, I'd like to protest, in this one case, society's propensity for turning the sacred into the profane.

I've heard more than one person say that the greatest role a woman can have is that of a mother. Despite the women's equality movement in all its iterations, I subscribe to that.

It's our mothers who rule the world as owners of the hands who rock the cradles.

It's our mothers who worry about us and pray over us when we venture out to our first day of school, our first car-driving trip alone, our first date, first party (God forbid we should get home past curfew; better to face Cerberus, the multi-headed dog of Greek mythology, while trying to sneak out of Hades); first day on the job. It's our mothers who call us her "baby," even though we're, like, 60. (True story: my mother-in-love refers to hubby and me as her "babies," even though I just turned the big 6-0 and as of next month, Dre will be a mere four years away from the really good senior discounts.)

It's our mothers who we know ultimately have our backs, even when they threaten to slap our teeth out our mouths; note that they brought us into this world and would, in a hot minute, take us out; imply what horrendous things they'll do to us if they have to turn this car around ... because these are the same women who lovingly rock us to sleep, comfort us when we are scared, read us bedtime stories, go hungry so we can eat, square off against giants and kings if they do anything to hurt us, encourage us to go for the football team/cheerleading squad/college degree/dream job/dream home, and are there to cheer us on whenever we obtain what we went for.

It's our mothers who taught us old-schoolers about choices: We could behave, or we could get a spanking/whuppin'. We could do our chores, or we could be grounded. Like the late comedian Buddy Hackett said: "My mother's menu consisted of two choices: Take it or leave it." It's our mothers who inspired such quotables as the one by Ambrose Bierce in "The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary": "Sweater, n. Garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly." (He could have added: "Eye, n. What a mother has two of in the back of her head when child thinks no one sees it acting a fool.")

It's our mothers who can still lay a guilt trip on us as smoothly as she used to lay us in our cribs for beddie-bye and a few minutes later, make us feel good enough about ourselves to conquer the world. It's our mothers who love us even if we're cursed with a face, or anything else, that only a mother could love.

And even if the women who bore us were not paragons of motherhood, they at least gave birth to us. As long as we're alive we have a chance to overcome our adversities, be contributing members of society and be better mothers to our own children.

May we all honor our mothers today (happy Mother's Day, Audrey Williams; happy Mother's Day in Heaven, Betty Carson Lewis). And may we all remember that "mother" is so much more than Part One of a two-part cuss word.

Email: hwilliams@adgnewsroom.com

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