Mother’s Day

Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday the 8^th day of May in this the year of our Lord 2026. I am so happy today because my beat is not war, but mothers. This will make most people happy and uplifted. Because after all, who doesn’t like and respect mothers and stories about them?

How Mother’s Day started in the United States

Mother’s Day as a national holiday had kind of a dual start or I guess you could say dual founders. Both of the women who started the day as a way to honor and support mothers did it because of the severe rural poverty and resulting infant mortality in their native Appalachia. In 1887 Mary Towles Sasseen from Henderson Kentucky led her class since she was a teacher, in what is believed to be the first observance of Mother’s Day. Mary traveled around Kentucky and Ohio trying to have the day recognized as a national holiday but she died in 1906 before that happened.

Schools in several states adopted the idea and in 1926 the Kentucky legislature passed a resolution officially recognizing Mary as the founder of the day. The creation of Mother’s Day as a national holiday is usually attributed to three women Ann Reeves Jarvis, Julia Ward Howe, and Ann’s daughter Anna M. Jarvis. Ann, known as “Mother Jarvis,” was an Appalachian homemaker who taught Sunday School lessons.

Mother’s Day began with concern for infant mortality

Mother Jarvis saw the extreme poverty and lack of education among the Appalachian rural poor which resulted in a high infant mortality rate and a high rate of the death of mothers during childbirth. She set out to educate and help the women who needed it the most and she was eventually joined by the other two women. Anna, Ann’s daughter, led the fight to honor her mother and to have the day become a national holiday and at her church the year after Ann’s death a service was held on May 10^th to honor not just Ann but all mother’s. In 1948 Anna died in what was then called a sanitarium from dementia.

Yes folks I am happy to have something to say that is not about war. And what better subject than Mothers. Oh, I could bring war into it of course. I could talk about the mothers who are photographed holding their starving babies perhaps for the last time. I could even tell stories I have personally seen concerning mothers in war-torn countries who would do literally anything for enough money to feed their babies. But I will not do that today and instead I will report on stories of mothers right here in America.

What about abortion?

Speaking of mothers right here in America many of my friends who are a little less conservative politically than I am, are very concerned about the plight of mothers. They are particularly concerned about infant mortality, the same as what those women I mentioned who started national recognition of mothers and that came to be Mother’ Day.  I wonder, so I ask them why they care so much about infant mortality. I point out to them that one day they advocate for “a mother’s right to choose.” The next day they are fighting to save infants from mortality. So what gives?

OH, wait, I get it now. Those infants still inside their mothers are not really babies but just protoplasm. Or more generously just part of the woman’s body. If so, then killing the child is not really murder because we have defined the child out of existence. I guess its like the war powers resolution which unconstitutionally gave the president the power to make war on his own without congressional involvement. He is required to report to congress within 60 days but when that is over he just says no the war is over and we won and this is a new war with a new 60 days. My point is that murder is murder. But homicide is a legal term awaiting interpretation.

Remembering late mothers

Anyway, we all have or had mothers at some point. But for many our mothers are long since dead and we have only the memories. Joan and I were both blessed by God with very good mothers who cared for us and loved us to the end. It sounds like a cliché but there is nothing like a mother’s love for her child. She will sacrifice to the point of giving up her own life for that child.

Mother bird and father bird

Let me give you an example from the animal kingdom. In my home office I have a bay window with my desk right in front of it. There are a few azalea bushes right outside the window and sometimes birds nest in them, especially cardinals which like to nest close to the ground. A couple of years ago I was working at my desk when I noticed a nest with a cardinal sitting in the nest. I didn’t know it but she was sitting on her eggs to hatch them. I watched her for a few days and she would sit there through rainstorms with the rain pounding down on her and through wind that looked like it would blow away her nest.

The male would come by from time to time just to check on her I guess. One day the eggs hatched and she had to feed the babies so she would go away and get worms for them and sometimes the male would contribute but the mother acting on instinct would give her life up for those babies. When they were at an age instinct told her was right she threw them out of the nest and said fly or die trying. They either fly or a cat eats them.

You won’t see an animal mother desire to kill her young

We humans have developed a more humane way of dealing with our young than the animal kingdom but there are similarities. The cardinal mother would never think of killing her young for some always good reason but our humanity has allowed us humans to do that. When our babies are a certain age we still know that it is time for them to leave the nest. Sometimes we call that time graduation and sometimes it’s marriage.

“Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Genesis 2:24

That verse becomes more and more clear as we age because the child means everything especially to the mother. She would literally take a bullet for that child and then one day the father takes his daughter’s hand and gives it to her husband and she has a new family which is now her first love as it should be. For the mother that child will always be her child but for the child which probably now has children of her own it’s different.

Well, that’s about enough glorification of the role of mothers for one day and one Castle Report.

Honor your mother on Mother’s Day

Finally, folks, visit your mother this Sunday for Mother’s Day. If you just can’t get there at least give her a call because I promise you she wants to hear your voice.

At least that’s the way I see it.

Until next time folks,

This is Darrell Castle.

From CastleReport.us, appears by arrangement – Ed.