[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 68 (Thursday, May 8, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5939-S5940]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              MOTHER'S DAY

  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, this coming Sunday is Mother's Day. For a 
few short hours, families will dust off a rarely used pedestal and 
attempt to pay homage to a woman who likely will hop right back off 
that pedestal in order to straighten her husband's tie, or apply a 
bandage to a skinned knee, or do one of the countless other small tasks 
that keep a mother's hands in perpetual motion.
  This Sunday, families may try to still those busy hands by serving 
mom a homemade breakfast in bed or taking her to a nice restaurant for 
brunch. They will shower her with cards, and flowers, and presents in 
an attempt to say ``thank you, Mother'' for all of the hours that she 
has labored over them. The cards that are smudged with small blurry 
fingerpainted handprints will be especially savored, as will the 
bouquets of short-stemmed, wilting flowers plucked forcibly from weeds 
and beds in the backyard by loving and determined children, and 
presented in lumpy homemade vases painted with the wild abandon of 
childhood joy. Each gift and each gesture, whether suggested to a 
youngster by a loving husband or father or proffered by an awkward 
teenager who otherwise prefers his connection to the family be kept 
secret, will bring smiles, even tears, of gratitude.
  On Sunday, mothers will revel in each moment, delight over each 
expression of caring, and give back tenfold, as they always do, the 
love offered from their most precious charge, their families.
  It does not matter whether she is a business executive, an hourly 
laborer, or an unpaid stay-at-home mom--the best mothers invest the 
best of themselves in their families. They are high stakes brokers and 
we, their families, are the stocks on their exchange. They may spend 
many hours at work, but they still manage to make their children feel 
loved. They still manage to make each house a home. They still manage 
to create and sustain the traditions and customs that make each family 
unique. They enforce discipline on homework and at bedtime. They ice 
the birthday cakes and pack the lunches. They cool fevered brows and 
beam at graduations. They set high standards and higher expectations. 
They glory in our successes and consol us in our defeats. Like ripples 
in a pond, their investment spreads across the generations. The 
memories deep within each of us that connect us to our families are 
often closely linked to our mothers. From the food dishes that make 
each holiday special, to customs that range from the right way to fold 
clothes to the way we choose to raise our own children, our mother 
lives on in us. It is up to us to live up to our mother's expectations, 
to be the kind of adults she always believed we could be and would be. 
And if we simply try our best, she will consider the return on her 
investment to be well met.

  I still remember, from growing up in a time when children memorized 
and recited poetry, particularly poetry that taught a lesson, the 
following poem by Margaret Johnston Grafflin:

                         Like Mother, Like Son

     Do you know that your soul is of my soul such a part,
     That you seem to be fibre and core of my heart?
     None other can pain me as you, dear, can do,
     None other can please me or praise me as you.

     Remember the world will be quick with its blame,
     If shadow or stain ever darken your name.
     ``Like mother, like son'' is a saying so true,
     The world will judge largely the ``mother'' by you.

     Be yours then the task, if task it shall be,
     To force the proud world to do homage to me.
     Be sure it will say, when its verdict you've won,
     ``She reaped as she sowed. Lo! This is her son.''

  An old adage avers that ``As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.'' 
Countless studies have demonstrated the essential role that mothers 
play in family life, and their role in shaping the personality of their 
children, for good or for ill. I know from personal experience that a 
mother's influence reaches even beyond the grave. My own sweet mother 
died when I was just a year old, leaving me to be raised by my aunt and 
uncle. But my mother's serene face shone, and still shines, from a 
photograph that I keep in my office. Ada Kirby Sale: I have always felt 
her gentle presence, her soft urging to do my best to make her proud, 
to live the lesson of that poem.
  She died of influenza in 1918, during the great pandemic that took 
many millions of lives worldwide, her final struggle that of ensuring 
her baby's fate, my fate. It was her wish that a particular aunt and 
uncle take me to raise. I had three older brothers and sister, but she 
wanted the Byrds, Titus Dalton and Vlurma Byrd, to have the baby, 
Robert. At that time my name was Cornelius Calvin Sale, Jr.
  As concerns of a SARS epidemic sweeping the globe make today's 
headlines, I fear that other children may also be similarly orphaned. 
If that is the sad case, I hope that these children may also be able to 
keep their mother's memory and influence with them throughout their 
lives, as I have been fortunate to do.
  You see, I do not remember ever having seen that mother. But it is as 
though she were there beside me often. I feel that I am here because of 
that mother's wish, and I feel that she is watching today. I hope that 
other members of their families will be so willing to take them in and 
raise them as their mothers would have wished, as my Aunt Vlurma and my 
Uncle Titus Dalton Byrd did for me. They took me in. They gave me a new 
name to share with them and to be proud of, and they brought me to the 
land of my heart, if not my birth, West Virginia.
  West Virginia is the birthplace of my wife, Erma Ora Byrd. As I have 
said before, and I am happy to say again and again, she is a wonderful 
mother, a wonderful grandmother and great-grandmother. The ripples of 
her influence have spread now to the third generation. Erma and I are 
proud parents, grandparents, and now great-grandparents of a brood of 
fine people, individuals that distinguish any group. Erma's investment 
in her family has paid off a hundredfold.
  Good mothers are so special--you know that; you know that; you know 
that--so essential to our families and our society that I am especially 
gratified that the U.S. national celebration of mothers has its own 
origins in the town of Grafton in Taylor County, WV. The only surprise 
is that it is such a recent holiday, first established in 1907, when 
Ms. Anna Jarvis of Philadelphia persuaded her mother's church, which 
was in Grafton, WV, to celebrate Mother's Day on the second anniversary 
of her mother's death on the second Sunday in May. By the next year, 
Mother's

[[Page S5940]]

Day was also being celebrated in Philadelphia.
  By 1911, thanks to the efforts of Anna Jarvis and her supporters, 
Mother's Day was being celebrated in almost every State--there were 
only 46 of them in 1911. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson made the 
official announcement proclaiming Mother's Day a national holiday, to 
be held on the second Sunday in May each year. It is a tribute to Anna 
Jarvis's mother that her daughter was so inspired and so persevering. 
It is an equal tribute to countless other wonderful mothers that Anna 
Jarvis's good idea spread so quickly. Today, Mother's Day is celebrated 
throughout the United States and in many other nations as well.
  Mother's Day sprang from a loving and loyal heart, not from the 
avarice of any executive of the greeting card industry, the floral 
delivery service, the chocolate candy manufacturers, or the restaurant 
business. And despite all of the advertising these days aimed at 
getting grateful families to spend money on ever-more extravagant gifts 
for Mother's Day, the warm and caring feelings that inspired the day 
remain central to the observance. I know economists would like to see 
more spending to boost the economy, but I am also sure that for most 
mothers, the best part of the day is the time spent with their 
families. The hugs and laughter of her children, the pride in them that 
she shares with her husband--these are the gems in the mother's crown 
and the gold in mother's vault.
  This Sunday, as each of us calls or visits our mother, or pauses to 
hold close her dear memory, we can savor the warmth and caring of her 
hugs and the special accolade that was her smile of pride.
  I close with another old poem, by Elizabeth Akers Allen, that for me 
is forever linked with Mother's Day: ``Rock Me to Sleep.'' I will offer 
it up to my own angel mother and to all other mothers who are angels as 
well.

                            Rock Me to Sleep

     Backward, turn backward, O time, in your flight,
     Make me a child again just for to-night!
     Mother, come back from the echoless shore,
     Take me again in your heart as of yore;
     Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care,
     Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair;
     Over my slumbers your loving watch keep:--
     Rock me to sleep, Mother--rock me to sleep!

     Backward, flow backward, oh, tide of the years!
     I am so weary of toil and of tears--
     Toil without recompense, tears all in vain--
     Take them, and give me my childhood again!
     I have grown weary of dust and decay--
     Weary of flinging my soul-wealth away;
     Weary of sowing for others to reap;--
     Rock me to sleep, Mother--rock me to sleep!

     Tired of the hollow, the base, the untrue,
     Mother, O Mother, my heart call for you!
     Many a summer the grass has grown green,
     Blossomed and faded, our faces between:
     Yet, with strong yearning and passionate pain,
     Long I to-night for your presence again.
     Come from the silence so long and so deep;--
     Rock me to sleep, Mother--rock me to sleep!

     Over my heart, in the days that are flown,
     No love like mother-love ever has shone;
     No other worship abides and endures--
     Faithful, unselfish, and patient like yours:
     None like a mother can charm away pain
     From the sick soul and the world-weary brain.
     Slumber's soft calms o'er my heavy lids creep;--
     Rock me to sleep, Mother--rock me to sleep!

     Come, let your brown hair, just lighted with gold,
     Fall on your shoulders again as of old;
     Let it drop over my forehead to-night,
     Shading my faint eyes away from the light;
     For with its sunny-edged shadows once more
     Haply will throng the sweet visions of yore;
     Lovingly, softly, its bright billows sweep;--
     Rock me to sleep, Mother--rock me to sleep!

     Mother, dear Mother, the years have been long
     Since I last listened your lullaby song:
     Sing, then, and unto my soul it shall seen
     Womanhood's years have been only a dream.
     Clasped to your heart in a loving embrace,
     With your light lashes just sweeping my face,
     Never hereafter to wake or to weep;--
     Rock me to sleep, Mother--rock me to sleep!

  Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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