This Sunday marks one of our nation's most important holidays -- the day on which we celebrate our mothers and all they've given us.
Just as on other holidays, we're being barraged with reminders to buy things, so much so that we may lose sight of the profound significance of what we're celebrating.
My wife, my own mother, and my mother-in-law, always accept the presents their kids offer with grace. Flowers, perfume, finger paints, school-made pot holders, as if they're the only things they've ever wanted.
But what's really important to each of them is to know that we're thinking about them today, that we love them, and that we're doing the best to be the people they raised us to be.
I know the same holds true with all the mothers in Alaska, regardless of age, race, or economic condition. Above all, you want to know that we're trying our best, for you, who have tried your best for us.
We all have our stories about our amazing mothers, and I know so many of them across the country, particularly in Alaska, but let me say a few words about my own mom.
Sandra Simmons was born and raised in Dallas, Texas, in the 1940s and '50s. Legend has it that she was named one of the most beautiful women in Texas. I didn't know all of that when I was growing up. I didn't think about my mother in those terms, and certainly not about what she might have sacrificed by marrying at 20 and having six children in seven years. (Some of that was brought home to me when, after we were raised, she went back to college to finish her degree.)
What I knew about my mom then is that her love for her children was without bounds and that she made the best cookies and fried chicken on the block. All my friends in the neighborhood where I was raised also seemed to think so. They were always at our house.
As an adult, I realize the cookies weren't the main draw.
Most blocks have that house that draws kids, a house that provides a glow of safety. A feeling that there's someone in charge, someone who is going to watch over you. Someone who knows what's right and wrong for you and isn't afraid to say so. Like millions of mothers across the world who provide that glow of safety, my mom was never afraid to say so.
She raised me and my five brothers and sisters not to be afraid to say so too.
I was also blessed with another mother in Mary Jane Fate, my mother-in-law. Her upbringing was very different than my mother's, but they have so many things in common. They're both strong beyond measure. They both provided the glow of safety that's so necessary to kids, and neither of them is afraid to say what's right and what's wrong.
Mary Jane Fate's story is one for the history books, and her fingerprints are all over our state. Raised in Rampart in a subsistence lifestyle, educated first at Mt. Edgecumbe and then at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, she was a woman of firsts: She was one of the first Alaska Native women to attend UAF, the first woman co-chair of the Alaska Federation of Natives, and the first woman on the board of Alaska Airlines.
She raised her daughter, my wife Julie, to be a fierce advocate of justice, of decency, of grace. And she raised her to be the best mother a husband could ask for.
Both my mother and my mother-in-law are growing older; their memories fading. But their spirits remain very much alive in their children and their grandchildren, and it will remain so in generations to come.
Mothers all across the state are shaping the character of their children, the character of their state, and the character of their country. They've made our country, and our state, the great place it is. Mothers worked particularly hard in Alaska, not too many years ago helping carve out homesteads in places like the Matanuska Valley, or in hundreds of villages maintaining a valued way of life, caring for their families and adapting to the inevitable forces of progress and change.
Strong, motivated, caring mothers have never been more important. And Alaska has them in abundance.
Like me, many of us won't be able to be with the mothers in our lives this Sunday. But like me, most of us will send flowers. We'll call. We'll tell them we love them. We'll thank them for all they've done for us. We'll try, in the best way we can, to tell them that we are becoming that person they wanted us to be.
Happy Mother's Day to all the wonderful mothers across Alaska and the country.
Dan Sullivan was elected to the U.S. Senate from Alaska in 2014. Before that he served as Alaska's attorney general and commissioner of the state Department of Natural Resources.
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