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As children, we were poor.  Some would say,  “Oh yeah, right.  You guys always say that.”  But no, we were really poor.  In fact, one-year things were so bad that the four of us, my brother and 2 sisters only had enough money to purchase my mother a 69-cent bottle of nail polish.

Being so young and poor, the color was not an issue.  We simply wanted to get my mother SOMETHING SPECIAL for Mother’s Day.

We were also aware that the local soul music stations would play a song by the Intruders that was incredibly popular at the time and made especially for Mother’s Day.

“I’ll Always Love My Mama” was the name of the song that became a mega hit in the late 60’s and remains incredibly popular until this day. Moreover, it was just as important that we tune into a radio station that played both sides of this song recording.

And so we presented my mother with her present early that Sunday and decided to give her the morning to herself.

Early that afternoon around 1 p.m. of a beautiful summer-like Mother’s Day, we found my mother sitting on the sofa bragging over the telephone to my aunt about her wonderful Mother’s Day gift, hot pink nail polish and the great breakfast prepared by her children.  Pink nail polish?    Salty scrambled eggs, burnt toast slathered with huge amounts of margarine and Welch’s grape jelly and watery coffee. God bless this woman.

Within moments, my mother ends the telephone call and as if by cue, the disc jockey of the time in the midst of the Sunday Morning Classics starts to play our song (yes, our song).

The song begins.  “Whoo-oooh, whoo-hooh, hooh-hooh” (or something like that).   Instantly, the four of us run into the living room.  My brother turns the radio up really loud.

We surround my mother each giving her a kiss and telling her we love her; and then the four of us, arm in arm begin swaying and bopping to the beat.  You see in the hood, you do not just sway.  You sway and you bop to the beat because after all, this is how we roll.  We break into song.

For the next six and a half minutes, it is about my mother.  She is all we have in the world and we literally shower this magnificently deserving woman with more love and song than she has probably received from us all year long.

To this day, I remember the love, tears, pride and joy in my mother’s beautiful brown eyes.  In fact, she loved it so much, that as poor as we were at the time, she gave up 75 cents that day at which point, my brother and sister bolted out of the house, running down the street to Miss Loretta’s record shop to buy this record.  JACKPOT!!!

We continued to play “I’ll Always Love My Mama” all day long serenading my mother, as we arm in arm, swayed and bopped to the beat while in between showering this beautiful woman with hugs and kisses.

As such, the swaying, bopping, singing and the Intruders became a Mother’s Day ritual from thereon.   Of course, the gifts improved greatly as time went by.

As in the wisdom that comes with motherhood, knowing that not all things are perfect and the possibility of technical glitches, if the video does not start up, here is the site: http://youtu.be/CA17LOabVGs .   Enjoy.

The above post is a re-blog of a post I wrote two years ago.  Although I have made a few changes, the spirit remains.

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY.