Hallmark did not invent Mother's Day.

On the contrary, the first American Mother's Day 136 years ago was a call to something bigger than the commercial veneration of mothers.

The call was peace, the day, "Mother's Peace Day," as it was coined by its founder, Julia Ward Howe.

No stranger to activism throughout a life that began in 1819, Howe was an abolitionist, a suffragette and a poet who wrote the words to "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."

But it was when Howe was in her 50s that she took up her most ardent cause, a cause she believed was as great as equality — that of international peace, as could only be espoused by mothers.

With six children of her own, Howe knew mothers were the ones who taught their sons charity, compassion and gentility of spirit, then wailed as those sons marched off to the killing fields. Mothers not only grieved for their dead sons, theirs was also the intimate task of caring for those sons and fathers who came home alive, but dead inside. Theirs was the job in war-torn countries of putting the broken society back together.

"Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters, to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone bear and know the cost?" she wrote in her memoir, "Reminiscences."

Howe first traveled to London to promote an International Women's Peace Congress.

Failing, she returned to her Boston home in 1872 and started her own Mother's Peace Day observance as a meeting on the second Sunday in June, with various speakers and a proclamation she wrote

"Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of fears! Say firmly: 'We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says, 'Disarm, Disarm!"'

Howe lived during a time when women struggled to find a public platform. She couldn't quite capture the attention of the American public. Within several years, Mother's Peace Day had fizzled out.

Happily for those of us who appreciate the opportunity to enjoy breakfast in bed once a year, another woman took up the cause in 1907.

This time, Mother's Day caught on. In 1914, two years after my grandmother was born, President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother's Day, though "peace" was no longer part of the title.

Today, in our culture, Mother's Day is a day for giving flowers, cards and gifts to the 83 million mothers in the United States who deserve all of the above.

And more.

Little ones will offer fresh-picked dandelions from the yard. Those husbands and partners who don't typically cook will try their hand at supper, so their wives won't have to. Sons and daughters who live far away will take the time to call their mothers, making Mother's Day the peak long-distance calling day of the year.

On Mother's Day this year, there also will be activity to support the legacy of Howe.

A group calling itself CODEPINK will "reclaim the original sentiment of Mother's Day," holding a 24-hour peace vigil outside the White House, beginning at 3 p.m. on May 13, the day before Mother's Day.

Once again, women, including Howe's great-granddaughter, will rally around the unique perspective a woman brings when there is talk of war, and peace, says co-founder Gael Murphy.

"People think war is man-to-man," says Murphy. "Yet in every conflict, women and children are disproportionately the victims of war and violent conflict. Women are the ones left behind to clean up the messes of war. It is only logical and just that women be allowed to sit at the tables of peace negotiations and reconciliation."

Peace is an ideal, some would say, in a world that has included the likes of Adolph Hitler, on a planet that has for centuries operated on the notion that war is a powerful nation's only road to maintaining freedom and honor.

And yet, there are those Americans, like Howe, who believe passionately in the possibility of such ideals.

Even as those in power scoff at such naivete, mothers like Howe believe that a monumental shift in world view can occur, if only enough people stand up.

Just as any mother would, they hold out for hope, even when none is apparent on the horizon.

Debra-Lynn B. Hook, who lives in Ohio with her three children and her husband, has been writing about family life since 1998. E-mail her at dlbhook@yahoo.com.