This Mother's Day, recall the time our moms 'wasted on their roses'
A heritage and a hope
Peter Johnston

Two lessons from a rather small book and some thoughts on some very important persons as we approach Mother's Day in a little over a week.

Perhaps you can bear with me as we explore whether there could be a connection.

For some reason last night I began thinking about a very little book I read sometime between my 17th and 19th birthdays. We didn't have to read it in K-12 back then in the public school system in Amherst, N.Y. And it wasn't a book on my required reading list as a student at Cornell in the 1970s.

But it came highly recommended by a friend either my senior year of high school or freshman year of college. Sometime thereafter it was turned into a movie which I have never seen … so I cannot speak for how well or poorly it conveyed the significant messages of the book.

Written in 1943 in the midst of World War II by a Frenchman, it begins with an aviator who is stranded in the Sahara Desert. With only about a week's worth of water he is anxiously trying to fix his plane when to his surprise he hears a voice and is confronted by a little prince. Hence, the title of the book, The Little Prince.

The aviator is in part annoyed at this interruption. He is tending to a "matter of consequence" - a disabled plane in the middle of the Sahara Desert a thousand miles from humanity. At the same time he is attracted to the simple, pure-hearted nature of this fellow sojourner.

I cannot do justice to the book and may miss some justifiable criticisms of it, but suffice it to say that this little prince, who has himself traveled from a little planet (very likely Asteroid B-612) teaches this sophisticated aviator a lesson or two.

The planet from which the prince came is very small. In fact I believe he could see over 40 sunsets in what we would call a day. He had a very beautiful flower to which he assiduously attended thinking it was one of a kind. When he arrived on earth and at one place saw dozens of roses like the flower on his planet, he temporarily became disillusioned having previously assumed that his flower was unique in all the universe.

He was disillusioned until he learned from a fox a lesson that he later imparted to the aviator. It was not the uniqueness of the rose that made it so significant but, "It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."

Of course his use of the word "waste" carried with it a sense of repetitious, selfless devotion. Day after day the little prince tended to the needs of that singular flower on his little planet in such a manner that the rose became very special. There are other lessons in this little book but in reflecting upon "matters of consequence" and "the time you have wasted on your rose" I think of my mother who selflessly, repeatedly, devoted herself to my father, my brother and me as we grew up.

My brother and I have vivid memories of how our mom, as a homemaker, was "always there."

I think of my wife and her selfless, repeated devotion to our children and many other moms with whom we are acquainted, who turn their eyes from other "matters of consequence" (such as broken planes in the middle of the Sahara or other aspirations

of personal fame and glory) in

order to prepare another meal, to tuck another child in bed or to help another child with a night's lesson. So as we approach another Mother's Day, still over a week away, we might do well to remember the time our moms "wasted on their roses" that made those roses so important … and thank them for that selfless love in tending to true "matters of consequence."

Peter Johnston, an East Bernard resident, earned a history degree from Cornell University and is a former high school history teacher.