Where Is Mother?

Two thoughts come sharply through two questions really, almost always asked by children, young or old, when they come home from anywhere at any hour: “Is mother home?” “Where is mother?”

And mothers in turn, blessedly and earnestly, ask their own kind of questions: “Are the children at home?” “Are they all in?”

One doesn’t belong to someone else without having absence felt. One doesn’t give life, and birth, and dedicated service without a sense of emptiness in absence. “Where is mother?” “Are the children at home?”

These meaningful and poignant and ever-recurring questions are immortalized by the poet in these two lines of mother love: “I know⎯yet my arms are empty, That fondly folded seven, And the mother heart within me Is almost starved for heaven.”

“Is mother home?” “Are the children at home?” Our very souls are asking⎯even when we know the answer⎯even when the children are gone⎯even when mother has gone⎯even when the answer it one of emptiness.

There are other questions asked by mothers as they give their lives, their love, their counsel, and their encouragement: “Where are you going, son?” “Is everything all right, son?” “What can I do for you, son?” “You can do it, son. You can do it.” Such is the faith of mothers⎯faith and wise forbearance.

Yes, they would like to hold you, their children, from flight. (In a way they would.) And sometimes they would like you tied to them. (In a way they would.) But they know from the earliest years of your youth that there are some things you must do for yourselves: some things you must venture alone⎯and they watch and wait, as James Logan wrote in this one yearning line: “His mother from the window look’d With all the longing of a mother.”

And so we have the picture, the unforgettable picture and impression of mothers waiting⎯waiting at night, waiting at mealtime, waiting at the bedside of sickness; still waiting after the flight of manhood, of womanhood, has taken the children far from home⎯mothers looking for letters, looking for news, looking for those they love. “I know⎯yet my arms are empty, That fondly folded seven, And the mother heart within me Is almost starved for heaven.”

“Is mother at home?” “Where is mother?” There is only one voice that can answer this question with full satisfaction and assurance. And as the children enter and ask it, may there be more mothers at home where more mothers ought more to be. And from us their children may there be more thoughts for waiting mothers, more thoughtfully held in our.