Clipped from some newspaper or magazine in July of 1943 and sent from the Navajo Ordnance Depot to his own mother, I could think of no better day to share these sentimental war-time thoughts from Granddaddy Bill on the singular beauty that is a mother.
It took a sailor to find a new use for a worn out word which gives it fresh sparkle and a deeper meaning than ever before. I thought the word glamour was through – ready to die from overwork – until I heard one of the boys at a U.S.O canteen express his approval of a solidly built matron with a good humoured smile.
“She makes me homesick but it doesn’t hurt,” he said – “she had mother glamour.”
And so she did. You could be sure just by looking at her, that the cookie jar at home was always filled and that there were no restrictions on lifting the lid. You felt certain that her nerves were strong enough to stand beating drums and blaring saxophones and a goodly measure of back slapping – that her rugs had often felt the contact of scuffing young feet. You could picture her in generously proportioned, spic-and-span gingham aprons, turning innumerable pancakes on her soapstone griddle. You could imagine her listening with flattering and unforced interest to enthusiastic youthful confidences.
Perhaps, like me, you may never before have heard the phrase, “motherglamour,” but you know exactly what that boy meant. Mother glamour is compounded of family games and measles, of birthday cakes and Thanksgiving turkeys, of Christmas tree candles and Easter egg hunts – of homemade Halloween costumes and pack numbers sewn on cub-scout sleeves. It is the fragrance of ginger and cinnamon, of chocolate and bubbling molasses; it is the sound of corn popping, of puppies barking, of flames snapping in a friendly fireplace; it is the color of snowy marshmallows and golden pumpkin pies. Mother glamour – it’s synonym is home – is what soldiers dream about, all around the world.
–Elsa Connors
Aug. 12, 1943 (Nine days till I break boot camp!)