So much more

There is so much more that will be added here. If your still checking keep coming back! Many of my favorite pieces have been found since Laura passed away. If you have something she wrote to you or even just a special experience/ memory please let me know and I will add it to her book.

He trusted me with you

A frantic search to validate my life,

I bring each recognition to your view.

A gentle hand touched my heart:

How can I doubt my worth?

He trusted me

He trusted me with you.        

(Another poem I hadn't heard until her funeral)

Need to add the rest of the these pictures:)

Cuddly Mothering Joys

(we came across this poem shortly after Laura passed written between Laura's 3rd and 4th babies, Heather and Holly)

I feel sublimely blessed

when cradling your sleepy head

at last upon my breast.

So suddenly your days were filled

With running squeals and toys.

I find I'm sorely missing

Those first cuddly mothering joys.

Big Can Be Beautiful

I would like to have the bishop read a little bit about what Laura is about, in a letter to the editor that she wrote after a lady observed a young mother in a story trying to take care of a bunch of little kids in a shopping cart and trying to shop in a store.  So this is Laura’s retort to that letter.  And I keep it in – I have a book, a little special book of mine, and this is it.  And I keep it with a great picture of her  – this is next to my patriarchal blessing.  This is what Laura’s about.  And she was not afraid to be vociferous about it.  

  

Big Can Be Beautiful. 

As a pregnant young woman with three small children, I’d like to respond to Mrs. Hart’s letter ‘Plan for Parenthood’, November 6^th.  I do not appreciate her grief for my children or myself.  My children, like many others, were planned, and welcome.  They are a full time job, I'll admit, but no child will be left out, as she put it.  Love is unlimited, and a child can just as easily share his mother’s time and attention with other children who also supply love and attention to each other, as a job, community service, fancy cooking, immaculate housekeeping, social activities and/or hobbies. 

I enjoy raising children, and am quite proud of my profession.  Please don't pity me or my sisters in fulltime motherhood, and please, Mrs. Hart, don't judge the quality or the lives of our children by the supermarket scene.  A shopping cart is hardly the place to teach and entertain three small children.  A home can be.

I’d also like to respond to the idea that large families on low incomes are miserable because they are crowded, hungry, uneducated and uninvolved.  I am one of 9 children.  My father was still in school with 4 children, so our income was extremely limited.  Mother never worked.  Few women have to work.  We were a little crowded, I admit, but I like to think of it as close.  There is no price tag on love, and that was rich in abundance.  My mother was a great teacher, and even if I did have to work my way through college, it was a course in time and money management which I'll never regret.

Big families can be beautiful, even on low incomes.  I know.

Laura Savage

The Gardener

The Gardener

Dear Mom, I’ve been trying to write poetry,

And wond’ring where I got my start

Thinking maybe I do have an avenue here

For wringing things out of my heart.

I’m sure you were there the first time two words rhymed

saying “That was great – lets try some more”

Making “Glittering, glittering comes the snow”…

Feel like red carpet strewn on the floor.

As I I’m thinking of you as a mother

I see a sweet gard’ner in plaid

Focused on each seed she’d found or might find

In each of the children she had.

I remember hours over the piano

Or at least within earshot of my violin.

Listening to practice, especially on strings,

Couldn’t have been where you’ld like to have been.

And yet you were there for each lesson,

Each recital and concert and game’

Every school play, campaign or audition

You were ever there fueling the flame.

So I pray as you look on your garden

It reminds you of all you do best.

In the rearing and nurture of children,

No garden on earth’s been more blessed.

With All My Love and Admiration

Laura

My Mother

My Mother

My mother is the beauty that caught my father’s eye.

The sweet and tender girl that fit the dreams he’d built so high.

My mother was my cradle through many a sleepless night.

The font of life.  But more, the well of warmth, and love’s sweet light.

My mother was the pillar that calmed my childhood fears,

Doctored stub toes, shared feverish nights, and kissed away the tears.

My mother taught me how to pray, to trust my Father’s care,

To help me through the trials of years when she would not be there.

My mother taught me how to work, to read, to think, to try,

The light of simple faith in God, the darkness of a lie.

My mother taught me how to smile and struggle on through life,

To seek for joy and growth and friends, and not the things of life.

Yes, Father knew he’d need some help.  I’d lots to face on earth.

He pondered all the blessings he could give me at my birth,

And loving me, he blessed me with the greatest he could send:

A mother’s love, a guiding hand, a teacher, and a friend.

Laura Workman

(That was her vision of motherhood.  And she was successful- Her Father Dan J. Workman)  Read at her Funeral

Daddy's Eyes

DADDY’S EYES

A girl asks if she’s beautiful

Not of mirrors or a prize

But of her own reflection

In her Hero Father’s eyes.

She asks if she is loveable.

She asks if she’s enough.

If she’ll be strong and ready

When what lies ahead is tough.

She asks if she is valued

For whatever she can be.

If she’s trusted to be capable

When life has set her free

And if she finds that.beauty,

That she’s trusted to survive

She’ll find strength enough for all life holds

In what she’s seen in Daddy’s eyes.

All My  Love Always

Laura