Along our years motherhood has planted three pictures that are so good for
us to see that love and memory should always keep them bright. Pictures of
sentiment they may be. Call them so if you will. But they are,
nevertheless, the anchors that have held many a soul from sinking in the
mire of life’s way.
The first is the picture of the young face that bent above us when we were
babes—a face wistfully tender and wonderfully touched with the glow of
parenthood’s first self-consciousness. The lips move. They never knew the
name of love so well until they had trembled in the midst of dismal floods
for love’s own sake. They never knew the voice of prayer so well until the
burden of creation came to be shared by the heart behind them. We did not
suspect the love that throbbed in that heart above us and gave strength to
the arms that held us. We know something of it now—and appreciate the debt
that never can be paid.
The next is the airy and elusive picture of our own futures which her fond
hopes painted on the shadowed walls of the old room at home or in the air
above our beds as we slept. Those pictures were too perfect, of course,
for the hope and love were perfect that imaged them. She thought us better
than we were and had more faith in us than we ever had in ourselves. But,
what a garden this world would be if we refrained from violating at least
the spirit of the dreams that thronged her mind when we were still wrapped
in the unconsciousness of the years before the awakenings came.
The last picture is seen not by looking backward but by looking forward.
The other two are memories. This is an anticipation. They sadden us. This
fills us with a wondrous joy. Many times we have seen her waiting face and
her hand upon the gate at evening time. If we look, we can see her yonder
now—ahead of us. The face that bent above the way’s beginning looms also
at its close. It is older and gentler and touched with a perfect light.
But it is the same face—and her hand is on the gate.