A Maternal Presence

 This weekend is Mother's Day!   How lucky I was to have Janie May Lawrence Cooper as my mother!   She was the Presence of God on this earth raising children and making them stand for something!  Her mother died as well as her father by the time she was 8 and she was raised by Aunt Minnie and Uncle Ollie.   She had no guides for being a mother.   Then she married her second cousin, Allen Britten Cooper, and his mother was a "screaming mimmy" by some accounts.  She got left out of the maternal role models.

Didn't matter.  She found it or she discovered it along the way.  She had 8 children and she found a niche to each one of them.   I was the baby.  It was easier to find by then!   What a wonderful cook she was!  No one better.  But she saw the value in sitting down at the table together and eating good food.  And she did it on what was available in her garden, in her hen house, and in the barn where the milk cow was!

And her religion flooded every room.   People would say to her, "Say a little prayer for me" and she would say, "None of my prayers are little!"   Her hands and her heart were the hands and heart of God.