Mothers Were Once Daughters

Every home should have a daughter, for there’s nothing like a girl

To keep the world around her in one continuous whirl.

From the moment she arrives on earth and on through womanhood,

A daughter is a female who is seldom understood.

One minute she is laughing, the next she starts to cry—

Man just can’t understand her and there’s just no use to try.

She is soft and sweet and cuddly but she’s also wise and smart—

She’s a wondrous combination of mind and brain and heart . . .

And even in her baby days she’s just a born coquette,

And anything she really wants she manages to get,

For even at a tender age she uses all her wiles,

And she can melt the hardest heart with the sunshine of her smiles . . .

She starts out as a rosebud, with her beauty unrevealed,

Then through a happy childhood her petals are unsealed.

She’s soon a sweet girl graduate and then a blushing bride

And then a lovely woman as the rosebud opens wide . . .

And someday in the future, if it be God’s gracious will,

She too will be a mother and know that reverent thrill

That comes to every mother whose heart is filled with love

When she beholds the angel thatGod sent her from above . . .

And there would be no life at all in this world or the other

Without a darling daughter who in turn becomes a mother.

Helen Steiner Rice, Virginia Ruehlmann, and Patsy Clairmont, The Poems and Prayers of Helen Steiner Rice (Grand Rapids, MI: Revell, 2004).