Subject: ADD: Mother (Tom Paxton)
From:
Joe Offer
Date: 10 May 01 - 02:40 PM
I think I'll copy-paste the article into the Forum because I think the link will disappear.
-Joe Offer-
Paxton's song an anthem for Mother's Day (Eric Zorn, Chicago Tribune, May 10, 2001)
Tom Paxton's song "Mother" always, always gets to me, and I always, always think about it when Mother's Day comes around. I've wondered why. The song is about adoption, and I'm not adopted nor are our kids adopted. My wife and I explored adoption awhile back yet didn't follow through, all for reasons too complicated to get into. But that's not it either. My guess is it's because "Mother" uses the theme of adoption to distill the encompassing, wistful, intense and fundamental bond between mothers and children that's otherwise hard to isolate. Distance, disagreements and disconnects can complicate the relationship, but this melancholy song draws the listener back to its essence, an essence we can never truly get enough of, an essence for which our tributes Sunday will be inadequate. Paxton is not an adoptee or an adoptive parent either. He told me he wrote the song in the late 1970s after hearing a young folksinger perform a bitter lament addressed to the birth mother she'd never met. "I decided to attempt a similar song, also from the point of view of a young woman, but to try to see the situation more lovingly," he said. "I felt it could only work if written from a woman's perspective, so I gathered all my nerve and tried it." The lyrics underscore that much of maternal love is sacrifice--greater than we know, usually-- and only as we grow older do we come to understand it. "Mother" appeared on Paxton's 1983 album "Bulletin," and over the years, he said, many women, whether involved in adoption or not, have told him it tells their story. Yet men ache with inchoate love for their mothers too--at least this one does--and I suspect at least a few of them relate to it as well. Writer Rich Warren, whose work appears occasionally in the Tribune, said he's planning to play "Mother" this Saturday during "The Midnight Special," his weekly, 9 p.m.-midnight folk music program on WFMT-FM 98.7. And with Paxton's blessing and no apologies whatsoever for excess holiday sentiment, here are the words: Mother
(Tom Paxton)
Do you ever wonder, Mother, what became of me
As I wonder, Mother, what became of you?
Now your child's become a woman in her own right
And she'd like you to know, wherever you are, that she loves you.
I'll be honest with you, Mother, that it took some time
'Til I came to see the pain you must have known
When they took your child it must have felt like dying
But I'd like you to know, wherever you are, that I love you.
(Chorus:) Now your child's a mother three times over.
God knows that she loves those children so.
Feeling them beside me now I really can't imagine how
You found the strength to let your baby go.
Now I'd love to see you, Mother, just to let you know
That the mom and dad who raised me raised me well.
And I love them more for knowing that they chose me
But I want you know, wherever you are, that I love you.
Yes your child's a mother now, she has a family
And she treasures them the way she does her life
And she couldn't love them more if she had born them
And we want you to know, wherever you are, that we love you.
No I couldn't love them more if I had born them
And we want you to know, wherever you are, that we love you.
Pax Music, ASCAP
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