What an appropriate PhotoHunt subject for the day before Mother’s Day.
I grew up with the tradition of the Roses – White & Red – on Mother’s Day. I don’t know how widespread that tradition was in the rest of the country. I don’t know if it was unique to the southern mid-west. Or perhaps to the Presbyterian church?
All I know is that from my earliest memory of going to church on Mother’s Day, I remember the roses. We had wild rose bushes in our back yard. Red ones and white ones. Early on Mother’s Day morning, as we were getting ready for church, my mother cut five red roses and one white one from those bushes.
She carefully striped the tiny thorns from the stems before she pinned one of the red roses on each of her four children and one on herself. Then she threaded the single white rose into my fathers suitcoat lapel. At church, everyone was wearing either white or red roses.
I didn’t understand, or frankly care about, the reason for the tradition. I just enjoyed the extra treat of a fresh rose releasing its delicate scent from my shoulder all morning.
I’m not sure how old I was when it finally sank in. Maybe at some point it occured to me to ask why my Dad was the only one in our family with a white rose.

This one is in memory of both of my father’s mother who I never knew, and now also my mother’s mother, who I cherished and still miss.