A Mother’s Day Tribute

By Jim Hammond

My mother was the high school class valedictorian in Burwell Nebraska.  She traveled off to California to attend San Jose Bible College.  At college she met and fell in love with an upperclassman, my dad.  Dad was an older student who went to college after his time of service during WWII.  He thought, Jesus told us to love our enemies; I want to be a missionary to Japan.  They married.  Mom quit college, and had a son, my older brother Tim.  When Tim was just a baby, dad and mom went off to Japan.  While in Japan, Dad continued his schooling and missionary work.  He earned his Masters Degree in Oriental Studies.  He formally studied the language.  Mother picked up Japanese piece by piece just by living there. 

Full time mothers can be isolated at home.  Now amplify that isolation by cultural and language barriers.  Mom then gave birth to Sharon, then Mary, both born in Japanese hospitals.  Often on Sundays, mother would sing and play her accordion, for church.  She sang in Japanese.  Dad would preach in Japanese.

On their second furlough, (furloughs came every four years), I was born.  Mom and Dad continued to travel and speak to supporting churches.  The time came once again at the end of furlough to travel by ship back to Japan, with a nine-month-old baby, with three older siblings.  I wonder how hard it was to leave “home” again after catching up with family and friends back in U.S.

Mom was the center of my stability growing up.  It’s not easy being the emotional anchor for a boy like me, with four other siblings.  She was the one I came to for tummy aches.  She gave us that pink stuff, and a rubber hot water bottle for comfort.  She was the one who took me to the doctor when I shoved a bean up my nose and couldn’t get it out.  I gave my mother many scares.  It always seemed to be me that had to go get stitches; ten stitches in the forearm climbing dad’s bike before I was 2; Ten more for an ankle caught on a nail falling out of a pig pen (age 7), then ten more again when I broke those stitches open; ten more above the knee when attempted to stop my sister from riding “my bike” (age 9).  I stopped her; the fender stopped in my leg.  I couldn’t ride the thing for weeks.  It was mom’s hand I squeezed while the Japanese dentists worked on my teeth.  I don’t think they used Novocain back then.  If they did, I sure didn’t know it!!  It was mom’s face that paled as she anxiously watched a doctor operate on my badly infected thumb.  The doctor told her to put her head on her knees.  This accomplished two things.  Blood went back to her head, and she could no longer see what the doctor was doing to me.  Anxiousness over her children didn’t go away just because I grew up either.  She was anxious when I was an adult with a ruptured appendix.  Did I mention that mom had beautiful gray hair when she was very young?

Mom read many children’s books to us.  She did better in the mornings than at night.  At night she could not be relied upon to finish before her voice began to slow down and her head began to nod off.  It didn’t matter to me that she was exhausted, I would grab her chin and move it, “Mom, the story is not done yet!”  Mom was our my only Sunday School teacher till I was in fifth grade.  She read from the The Bible Story 10 volume set of blue books for children, as I carefully studied the colorful pictures.  (Our church library has this same set if you want to check them out).

I remember the homemade pizza and homemade cinnamon rolls she made in a land that hadn’t heard of these things.  We loved them.   I remember when my little brother, child number five, came along.  I remember the excitement of the phone call from the hospital telling me I had a little brother.  I remember the very difficult days I had in school.  Mom agonized over my struggles.  What was she going to do with the boy who pretended to be sick to avoid going to school?  She agonized over the decision to pull me from the English speaking Christian school that my siblings went to, to put me in an English speaking military base school.  Two years later, she agonized over the decision to hold me back to repeat third grade and put me back in the Christian School.  Holding me back was one of the best decisions she made for me.  I did well in school after that.

When we moved back to the U.S.  I was entering fifth grade.  My oldest brother Tim was a senior in High School.  College was on the minds of mom and dad.  It was for us primarily that we came off the mission field.  A circle was completed.  Interestingly enough, Dad accepted a job to teach full time at San Jose Bible College, where Dad and Mom met, and is still teaching there today, full time, 31 years later.  Mom worked full time so we could get the college degrees she never finished.  All five Hammond children graduated from Westmont College BEFORE getting married.  Mom then began to work toward the dreams she had for her grand babies.

It has been ten years now since my mom went to be with the Lord.  She faithfully passed a baton of faith and courage to her children.  We hold that baton now in our hands running, serving, reading, and caring.  I now know what it’s like to have heavy eyelids reading to my kids at night.  I hope to pass the baton as well as she did.