As we approach Mother’s Day, a simple elementary-school tune keeps re-playing like a broken 45 record in my head. I don’t exactly remember which of my teachers taught me this little tune. I’m surprised that I even remember every line of it from so many years ago in Georgia.
It was a very special childhood rhyme extolling the nature of mothers:
M is for the million things she gave me
O means only that she’s growing old
T is for the tears were shed to save me
H is for her heart of purest gold
E is for her eyes with love-light shining
R means right, and right she’ll always be
Put them all together they spell “MOTHER”
A word that means the world to me.
It didn’t matter to me much back then where the tune came from, but now with it resounding in my brain, I was curious about its origins. So I went searching.
These lines are actually part of the chorus for a song written in 1915, with music by Theodore F. Morse and lyrics by Howard E. Johnson. The first line of the song is “I’ve been around, you bet, But never went to school.” The tune was written at a time when love of mom was a common theme of many new songs.
Morse and his wife Theodora were a successful songwriting team for the famous publishing companies of Tin Pan Alley, an area in New York known for its major music publishing houses and songwriters in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Along with the mother tribute, Morse also wrote his share of racist and anti-Semitic tunes in an era when those were just as commonplace.
Johnson, not related to the motel chain family, was also an accomplished Tin Pan Alley songwriter. He is known for co-writing the popular song “I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream.”
While the mother tune is sweet, what’s even sweeter are the things we do to celebrate our mothers every day of the year. For that special day we acknowledge them collectively, I’m offering some gift ideas straight from the auction tables: jewelry – a gift that is always an expression of love.
