Share Your Favorite Memory of Your Mom | Happy Mother's Day | Best Memories of Mom

Video Transcription:

Jim Dodson: - Hi, it's Jim Dodson, The Florida Bike Guy. So happy Mother's Day. This is a day when we sort of, what I wanted to do is sort of reflect back on my favorite memory of my mother, who has passed away. Bless all of you who have your mothers who are still alive.

But my mom was from another generation, obviously. My mother was born in Sanford, where I was born. In Central Florida. My mom was born in Sanford and lived her entire life there, really, until the last couple of years when she came down here to be with us. But she was born of that generation that was so different than today. There's a picture that I'm sharing of my mom at the kitchen table with my brother and I. My mother was content with life. I think the major thing that I remember about my mom was she was just a person who was content. Contentment is such a lost art today. My mother wanted nothing more than to be married to my father. She fell in love with the only man she ever loved, she said. She married him. They lived together until he died some 20 years before she did. She wanted to raise her three boys. We lived on 16th Street in Sanford. My parents bought the house that I was raised in when I was around three years old, and the only place I ever knew. My mom lived there until she was about 89, when she could no longer live there, because it was a two story house. My parents lived a very simple, modest life. My mom did not work. She had two wonderful friends, really three wonderful friends on our street, and what I remember so much about my mom is that she would go down, probably once a day, maybe every other day, to one of her friends and sit in the afternoon for an hour, hour and a half, and have a cup of iced coffee, oddly enough, and just talk. And what an amazing gift that is, that peace, just to live that life.

We lived in an area where we had large oak trees around our house, and my mom spent her afternoons in the backyard, sitting outside in an aluminum folding chair. The breeze was blowing in Central Florida. It was hot otherwise. And she was as content as you can imagine. And loved sitting there, watching the world. And it's just that memory. When I would arrive from college or when we came over to visit after we were married, that's where she would be. In the backyard. She didn't have a great deal of what we would call possessions in life. She had things that were nice, but she wasn't yearning to buy something new. When I was growing up, we went over to New Smyrna Beach once a year, at the end of June. We went over there for a week to the same hotel. That was back in the day when you had really delightful mom-and-pop motels on the beach, in New Smyrna Beach, and we went to the same place, Sea Vista, every year. We knew the owners, stayed in the same unit every summer. And it had a predictability about it, which was so delightful for me as a kid.

At the same time, my mom was willing and encouraged me to break away and do more than what she had done. My mother really lived that. She was a godly woman. She gave me the gift of faith. She lived a life of contentment. A life, quite frankly, that I think many of us would yearn for. I think we need to remember that there's a difference between being content, being satisfied where we are in life, being satisfied, not so concerned with I don't have what I want and I'm not gonna be happy until I get what I want, versus enjoying what we have, enjoying the gifts, the blessings of our life. Perhaps wanting, obviously, you're not complacent. You want to improve your life. But at the same time, you can enjoy every day with the things that you have in your life, and not let the days go by with that constant yearning for something more and not being happy or contented until you find it in the far distance. That time when my ship comes in and I have what I really want. I think the one really abiding trait that I received from my mom was that knowledge of contentment.

This is a wonderful holiday of Mother's Day. I know that we will gather this weekend to honor. My mother's gone, but my son-in-law's mother is still alive. We'll be together with my daughter, my wife, and we'll honor the mother of our children, and we'll honor Tim's mom, and my daughter and her children. So this is a time to love and to really recognize and appreciate and acknowledge the true gift of motherhood and the blessings of being a mom. So, obviously, I want you to enjoy this day, this holiday, this day with your mom. If your mom's passed, then honor the memory of your mother. And look for those things in our lives and their lives that each of us want to emulate and carry on. So enjoy your Mother's Day. I'm Jim Dodson, The Florida Bike Guy. Thank you.