Freegal Music Celebrates Mother’s Day

It’s the time of year when everyone starts thinking about their parents, as Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, National Parents Day (4th Sunday in July), and Non-Binary Parents Day (3rd Sunday in April) help us kick off the spring and summer seasons. This May, Freegal Music, the digital music service we subscribe to as a library, has made a special playlist to help you celebrate the mothers in your life.

A refresher on Freegal: it’s available both on our website (linked under Digital Content) and as a downloadable app for your smartphone. On its website, once you log in with your Davenport library card it’s free to stream any available songs, albums, playlists, or audiobooks, but you can also download five songs per week for offline listening.

The mother’s day 46-song playlist includes a variety of artists, genres, and styles, from pop (Meghan Trainor) and country (Carrie Underwood) to R&B (Alicia Keys) and international music (Bad Bunny). So however you and the mothers you know like to jam, there’s something here to put you in a grateful, celebratory mood.

Remembering Mom

love-you-momMother’s Day is quickly approaching — May 10th, in fact.  No doubt most of you have already planned your brunches and  bouquets in celebration of dear old Mom, and those are always appreciated.  Still, when I think back over the years, the mother’s day gifts that I most loved were those which were homemade: the cards with crayon pictures, the lilacs picked fresh from the garden, the attempts at breakfast in bed.  Still, one thing I never did for my own mom s-daughter1(or mother-in-law) was to write a thank you letter.  Now that they are both gone, I’m wishing I had.  Wishing that I’d worried less about fixing  a fancy meal with the good china and the white tablecloth in the dining room, wishing I’d spent less time looking for some sentimental card at the Hallmark store, and wishing instead that I had taken a few moments to write down in my own words how I felt.  To say thank you, to share a funny story, even, perhaps, to tease a little, but just doing it would show I cared.

If you think you might like to write your own letter to Mom, here are some books that might  give you some inspiration:

I Love You, Mom! A Celebration of our Mothers and Their Gifts to Us. This includes essays from celebrities like Larry King and Daisy Fuentes.

I Am My Mother’s Daughter: Making Peace with Mom Before it’s Too Late by Iris Krasnow.

Honoring Mothers On Their Own Special Day

Some say the holiday we celebrate traces its roots back to the 16th Century British holiday of Mothering Day, the annual custom of visiting one’s mother church annually, which meant that most mothers would be reunited with their children on this day.

In the United States Mother’s Day was first observed in 1907 when Anna Jarvis asked her Philadelphia church to hold a service in memory of all mothers on the anniversary of her mother’s death. Jarvis and friends undertook a letter writing campaign in 1909 lobbying for the creation of a national Mother’s Day. In 1914 Congress designated the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.

Mother’s Day is celebrated on different days in other world countries. For example, Spain and Germany honor mothers on the first Sunday in May. In Ireland and the United Kingdom it is celebrated on the fourth Sunday of Lent.