05/06/2007

Thoughts of mother warm the heart

By Ed Hungness
Local columnist edhungness@
yahoo.com

Read Ed's past columns here

This is an early reminder about a big day coming up.

We have just one week to do something nice for a special person in our lives. Mother's Day is celebrated in many countries, but here it always occurs on the second Sunday of May.

Our first Mother's Day was celebrated in Grafton, W.Va., in 1908. Six years later President Woodrow Wilson declared it a national holiday and it has been observed ever since with flowers, greeting cards, chocolate and dining out.

Who wants Mom to cook on Mother's Day? I suppose everyone has some special memory about Mom. In my circle of family and friends, I am noted for repeating stories from time to time. If you have heard this one, please bear with me.

When I was young, we lived in an old house with a coal-burning octopus furnace. We called it an octopus because it looked like one with its big round duct pipes that ran in all directions.

Dad would go in the basement every so often and stoke it up with coal from the bin. This beast didn't have a blower, so the only part of the house that stayed warm was the first floor.

My bedroom happened to be on the second floor, which didn't have insulation. Very little heat reached my bedroom so Mom always had plenty of quilts, blankets and flannel sheets on our beds.

One of her prized possessions was a heavy, cast-iron frying pan. Just about every household in the pre-Teflon age had one. Each night during the winter, she got out that pan just before our bedtime and heated it up on the kitchen stove. After it was good and hot, Mom wrapped it up in a bath towel, and climbed the back stairs to the second floor. Once there, she would slip it under the bed covers and move it all around making the sheets nice and toasty.

That, my friends, is called motherly love. If it was really cold, she would leave the towel-wrapped pan in the bed. Sometime during the middle of the night a big CLUNK could be heard throughout the house when my feet pushed the pan off the bed and onto the floor.

Mom no longer warms the beds, but she still uses the same cast-iron frying pan.

Next Sunday is a special day — a day to remember your mom, tell her you love her and thank her for warming up your life.

I'd better get busy now. It's time to order flowers, mail a card and buy chocolate.

Mom always shares her chocolate.

Ed Hungness and his wife owned their cottage on Fife Lake for six years before moving there after his retirement in 2005. His writing draws from life experiences and a love for the outdoors and northern Michigan. He can be reached at edhungness@yahoo.com or care of the Record-Eagle.