Peace on Earth, goodwill towards mothers

“ … and if it’s a funny old world, mama, where a little boy’s wishes come true.

Well, I got a few in my pocket and a special one just for you …”

That’s the way Bruce Springsteen expressed his affection for his mother, Adele, in his 1998 song The Wish. He gives her credit for giving him his rock and roll spirit and would even bring her up to the stage to dance with him during the occasional concert.

I guess we all, in our own way, want to honor our mothers, whether it’s in a song or poem, a Facebook post, or even a traditional heart and banner tattoo like sailors used to have.

Coming up this Sunday is one of those red-letter days greeting card makers love. They say Mother’s Day is right behind Christmas and Valentine’s Day for the most greeting cards sold. It’s also the day when the most phone calls are made.

The idea of honoring mothers goes way back to early Greek times when the goddess Rhea gave birth to Zeus and the pantheon of gods followed. Or so the story goes.

Early Christians had “Mothering Sunday,” on the fourth Sunday of Lent.

In the U.S., Mother’s Day became a thing in 1908 when Anna Jarvis came up with it to honor the sacrifices mothers made for their children.

And, since I can only speak from experience, mine was no different.

I mean, I had no idea what my mother had to go through to take care of me and my five siblings. I’ve come to realize she was a master at managing people and could’ve - if things were different - been the CEO of GM or some other big company. That’s how good she was at supervising us six rankling kids with six distinctly different personalities.

For most of us, thoughts of mother are never too far away. Even on the internet, when you have to enter your mother’s maiden name for one of the super-secret security questions to prove you are who you say you are.

I’ve whined about this, maybe all too much, but I still seem to be trapped in an eternal kerfuffle over passwords. If you forget and mess up three times, you can’t do what you were expecting to do, and you spend who knows how much time going through the process of trying to come up with a new password, and by the time you’ve done that all and are allowed to get where you were going, you’ve forgotten what you started out to do.

And don’t get me started on the PIN for your password.

This never happened when we didn’t have the convenience of shopping or banking or writing letters on the internet. You know, those long-gone days when we had to go out of the house to buy things at a real store, walk into a bank building, or mail our letters in an actual envelope.

Those of us who are “a little bit older,” ALBO for short, know what I’m talking about; those halcyon days before supersized meals and skinny jeans, back when everything was IRL.

I don’t know where I’m going with all of this, other than maybe looking at things that were and things that are. We get all wistful about things that were – no matter how old or young we are – and I suppose that tendency will never change.

As years go by, it’s pert near impossible to think about your mother without getting all maudlin and dewy-eyed; ask any poet or songwriter.

In addition to the above-mentioned Springsteen song, I’m compiling a mix-tape of “mother” songs, but Queen’s Tie Your Mother Down, or Frank Zappa’s My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama are not necessarily what I’m talking about here. No, they’re more along the lines of (Mama) Loves Me Like A Rock by Paul Simon and Merle Haggard’s Mama Tried.

The Beatles had a couple of good mother songs, such as Julia and Let It Be. And don’t forget Mother, the song John Lennon wrote about missing his mother, who was run over by a car when he was 14. There’s also Pink Floyd’s Mother, B.B. King’s Nobody Loves Me But My Mother, Bob Seger’s Momma, and just for variety, Mama’s Got a Girlfriend Now by Ben Harper.

And since she never let us play with our cap pistols on Sunday, I’m adding Steve Earle singing, “Mama said the pistol is the Devil’s right hand,” and one of my own mother’s favorites, Johnny Cash’s Don’t Take Your Guns to Town.

Before I forget it, May is American Bike Month, a time when millions will pedal into the Great Outdoors to commune with Mother Nature in their Spandex pants.

Because now and then, even Mother Nature needs a good laugh.