This coming Sunday is the day to honor Mothers, so this column is written in honor of all of them, my own mother included. She died when I was eighteen months old and I’ve always regretted not being able to celebrate this day with her. The sad thing is she died from what today could have been corrected by simple surgery.

I have faded pictures of her but they have never filled the void in my heart. Over the years when I’d question my father and other relatives on what she was like, they’d tell me she was a kind and beautiful person who loved her family very much.

As nice as those things were to hear I knew there had to be more to her than that. I longed to know the whole person. Did she get angry? Did she have moody days? What were her likes and dislikes? So many questions were left unanswered.

I had two stepmothers, one from age 3 to 9 years old and one from age 12 until a few years ago when she died. Why the first one married my father is a mystery to me. Even more perplexing is why she married my father. She didn’t like children and there were three of us girls. She was what some might refer to as the “Cinderella stepmother.”

My father remarried when I was almost thirteen and my sisters, by then grown, were on their own. She was a very shy, timid woman who did her best to understand what it meant to raise a teen-age daughter, but a true mother daughter relationship never developed. We remained on good terms throughout the years but we were more like two women living in the same house for different reasons, she as my dad’s wife and me as his daughter. I know, from observing other families, that there are some wonderful stepmother and stepdaughter relationships, but for us, that bond never quite materialized.

Growing up, I always felt like an outsider and envied my friends who would hurry home to share their joys with their mother or turn to them in times of trouble. She was the one person in the world who would listen to them and would love them no matter what. I’d feel sad when any one of them talked badly about their mothers and I’d let them know how I felt. I still have that same reaction today when I see or hear someone putting their mother down or not showing them the love, care, and tenderness they deserve. I know one day those missed opportunities will come back to haunt them.

As the mother of a daughter and son I know what it is like for a mother to love her children, and to be loved by them in return. What I don’t know is that feeling of being loved by a mother. Today I am a great grandmother, yet a day never passes that I don’t I think of my mother and believe that somewhere she is still watching over me. I like to think she is proud of me for the way I’ve confronted life without her presence. I think she knows I’ve always had her in my heart.

So to all of you whose mothers are still living, I hope you will make this Sunday a very special day by showing them how much you love and appreciate them. To all of you who are mothers I honor you for all the love and guidance you have given your children and I wish you the very best Mother’s Day ever with the hope there will be many more yet to celebrate.


Sacramento resident Joey Franklin, retired from more than three decades of full-time work in the newspaper business, now writes a monthly column for Spectrum.