A Rose

This year as in years past, the young women in our ward sold corsages for Mother's Day. The thought has occurred more than once in past years, "I wonder if $5.00 has ever caused so much mixed emotion between men and women." I suppose like most men, I approach Mother's Day with a certain amount of mixed emotion to begin with. "What can I give her that will in some small way let her know how much I love and appreciate her?" Five dollars for a flower is certainly an easy way to "put your conscience to rest". But more and more it hasn't been doing its job.

The other side of this situation is Sunday at church. Can't you just hear those women who's husbands didn't spring for the flower? "He doesn't even care enough about me to spend $5.00 for a crummy flower." Even if he made breakfast and gave her a card or even bought a present, there is a certain stigma about being one of those "without a flower".

Well, maybe I make too much of this. And maybe my conscience jabs me more than I would like because I don't always show her the rest of the year how much she means to me. Anyway this year I decided that I wasn't going to just buy the flower so her primary class could crush it. If I couldn't find something that was a little more lasting than a flower and that I really wanted her to have, I would just take my chances with a card and hope that she understood.

I went shopping Saturday with the million other husbands with only a slight hope that I would find something I really liked. The first place I stopped was Macy's. Right on the counter was a case of the prettiest rose pins I have ever seen. Now I was in a real dilemma. I loved them all. After much deliberation and several minutes of wishing that she was there to point to the one that she liked best I made my choice, paid my money and left. On my way home I got to thinking about how much I preferred this flower to the one that would be worn once and then discarded.

But the thought kept going through my mind, "But it's still not nearly as lovely as her" and "How can she really know how I feel" and "I hope she knows that this is more than just a piece of jewerly to me". Before I got home the first verse of this poem had formed in my mind and so I wrote this poem in her Mother's Day

card.

Gale L. Wolfenbarger
7 May 1988

A Rose

A rose is more than just a flower
With thorns and blossoms sweet.
A wife is more than just a friend
Who makes you things to eat.

A mother is a cherished gift
Your father gave to you.
To teach you things we all must know
And things we all must do.

We honor her this day each year
With flowers from our heart.
We try in vain to show a love
No plant can ere impart.

And when the day is over
The flowers soon will die.
But she is ours and we are hers
On that you may rely.

No gift can ever match the love
We feel inside for her.
She is in fact the sweetest gift
That God could have conferred.

Gale L. Wolfenbarger
7 May 1988