Heads Or Tails Tuesday

Today's prompt is heads- "Mother". For more HOT participants or to play along go here.

How fitting since this Sunday we celebrate mothers all over the country this Sunday, (other countries that celebrate Mother's Day on the second Sunday in May include: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Japan, and Turkey).
I thought I would share what this site says about how Mother's Day started in America.

It's said that Mother's Day was first suggested in the United Sates by Julia Ward Howe in 1872 as a day dedicated to peace after the Franco Prussian War. Ironically, the idea waned in popularity in the years before World War I. The holiday was revived thanks to Anna M. Jarvis.
Anna's dear mother was a minister's daughter and Sunday School teacher from West Virginia who graduated from an all female seminary, organized women's brigades during the Civil War to care for soldiers on both sides of the conflict, and ultimately settled in Philadelphia. Anna was twelve when she heard her mother teach a Sunday School lesson on mothers in the Bible. Still unmarried when her mother passed away in 1905, Anna was left alone with her blind sister Elsinore. She missed her mother dearly and felt we all too often fail to appreciate our mothers enough while they are alive. So, with the help of friends, Anna began a letter-writing campaign to garner support for a national Mother's Day holiday. Reaching out to influential leaders, including William Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, and John Wannamaker, Anna poured out a stream of solicitations for support of the idea. She believed, mothers deserved their own special day and that it would help strengthen family bonds.
She persuaded her mother's church in West Virginia to celebrate Mother's Day on the second anniversary of her mother's death, the 2nd Sunday of May. Carnations, her mother's favorite flowers, were supplied at that first service by Anna. White carnations were chosen because they represented the sweetness, purity and endurance of mother love. Over time, pink or red carnations became the symbol of a living mother, with white ones signifying those who had passed on. By 1911 Mother's Day was celebrated in almost every state, and flowers quickly became a lasting tradition to express love on the occasion. In 1914, Congress passed a resolution designating the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day, "a public expression of love and reverence for the mothers of our country." President Woodrow Wilson issued the first proclamation making it an official U.S. holiday.

I remember once my mother telling me that her favorite flower is the carnation. I am not sure the reason, but I like them because they last for so long and they come in such wonderful colors now.

I would like to take this time to thank my own mother, LeRae, for all the years of love, sacrifice, work, sweat and tears that she invested in raising me. I am thankful for the relationship that we have now. I wish so much that I could see her more often and I regret decisions I've made that have kept me so far from my family, most especially her. I love you mom and I hope that you have a wonderful weekend that leaves you feeling all the love that your children and grandchildren have for you!