Mother’s Day may be internationally observed only once a year (this year, on May 14), but our mother is the one person in our lives who can never be replaced. When you are looking at your mother, you are looking at the purest love you will ever know.
Even when you are a mother yourself, or a grandmother – or in my case, a great-grandmother – her memory never leaves you, and her influence in your life is beyond calculation.
My mother, Sarah Rebecca Goodman, was born in Australia in 1889, the daughter of Polish immigrants, and the second youngest of 11 children. There were so few Jews in Australia at that time that it was something of a miracle that she married one – my father, Joseph Henry Opas.
I was their fifth child, and the youngest, born in 1931. It was a time of worldwide economic depression and we were very poor. Although I had no toys that I can remember, and my clothes were hand-me-downs from my older sisters, I never felt deprived. My mother told me stories that fed my imagination. Somehow there were always books at home, and she read to me. She never laughed at my dreams – or those of my siblings – but tried to help us make them come true.
When I wrote my first poem at age seven, she sent it to the children’s page of our local newspaper, and when it won the Green Certificate – first prize – which was redeemed for two shillings and sixpence (about NIS 2.50), she was as excited as I was. For a little girl whose pocket money was a penny a week, I felt like a millionaire.
"Mother is the name for God"
“Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.”
William Thackeray
William Thackeray wrote: “Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children,” and I believe it is true. In my case, it certainly was. She had so little herself, but she tried to find ways to make me happy. There was free Community Singing every week at our local town hall. The words of the songs were up on a screen, and from the time I could read she would try to take me as often as she could. I felt so close to her then, and thought her the most wonderful woman in the world.
I have grandchildren and great-grandchildren who carry her name. I teach them the songs and nursery rhymes that she taught me. I still use her recipe books, and when I make something I remember from her kitchen, it is flavored with love. And sometimes I see her when I look in the mirror. She taught me honesty and decency, morality and ambition. She taught me prayers that I still say every night before I go to sleep… I know that a lot of the Hebrew is mispronounced, but even though I know better, I still have to say them exactly as she taught me.
Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote:
“Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall. A mother’s secret hope outlives them all.”
“Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall. A mother’s secret hope outlives them all.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The writer is the author of 14 books; her personal favorite, Esther – a Jerusalem Love Story, has been republished by Chaim.mazo@gmail.com. Reach her at dwaysman@gmail.com.