BENDING FOR GLADNESS: REFLECTIONS ON MOTHERHOOD
October 6, 2002The Reverend Anne Felton Hines
(Responsive Reading: #715, "Your Children," by Kahlil Gibran, Singing the Living Tradition)
I used to dread Mother's Day. For one thing, as a child I never seemed to plan well enough ahead to be able to afford something nice for my mom. Invariably I would approach her the day before Mother's Day, admitting that I had already spent most of my allowance and now had only fifty cents with which to buy her a gift. It was amazing the inexpensive items she would suggest to me - a spatula for 39 cents that she really, really needed, or a lipstick for 49 cents. I was always saved just in the nick of time.
But the next day, my friends and I would compare what we'd given our mothers, and I would be left mortified by my meager offering compared to the silk blouses or beautiful negligees they'd given their moms! I think the pressures of consumerism are even greater today - though I was heartened to learn from my grandson that he'd made his mother a gift at school, which I'm quite sure she will treasure far more than any silk blouse or negligee!
Then, as an adult, I became suspicious of the motives behind this national holiday. I learned that the original Mother's Day was organized in 1868 by Anna Reeves Jarvis, as a way to bring families together who had been torn apart by the Civil War. Four years later, Julia Ward Howe - a well-known Unitarian - tried to set June 2nd aside as a day when mothers would "specially pray that war may not come to slay any mother's son." But neither of these attempts succeeded - perhaps because they didn't turn a profit.
But in May of 1907, the daughter of Anna Reeves Jarvis, also named Anna, began the Mother's Day which we celebrate today - well, sort of. Her intention was that it be "religious and personal" - a day when Americans would attend church and wear a red carnation if their mother were alive, and a white one if deceased. President Woodrow Wilson added a patriotic flavor to it in 1914 when he signed a Congressional resolution establishing the second Sunday of May "for displaying the American Flag and as a public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers of our country."
So as I learned of the history of this day, and looked around me to see how the world of consumerism had perverted it, as well as how oppressive motherhood itself had become, I just got angry, and stopped celebrating it all together.
Indeed, the sermon I preached on Mother's Day 20 years ago, in my first year of ministry, was so angry, I'm actually surprised the congregation didn't throw me out right then and there! (I guess we truly were in a "honeymoon period!")
In that sermon, I wrote, "We live in a patriarchal society - one which has always practiced separation and domination; a culture that has tended to be anti-nature and anti-woman."
I went on: "We have taken to celebrating mothers one day a year,…sending cards which tell (her) in someone else's words how much she's appreciated, or buying gifts whether she needs them or not.…The children and/or father do all the cooking and clean-up normally done by the mother, in hopes that she won't notice or mind that she's responsible for it the other 364 days a year.
"And so I have stopped celebrating Mother's Day," I announced. "I have stopped because I believe it encourages the oppression of mothers and ultimately of all women. And I have stopped because it has become (simply) an opportunity for merchants to make huge profits and to rob us of the true meaning of the day." Period.
But now I wonder if my anger wasn't a bit more personal than I let on in that sermon - if I wasn't still reacting out of a sense of betrayal, knowing that the myths with which I'd been raised about motherhood were just that - myths. And that both I and my children had been hurt by those myths.
From the time I was a small child, I wanted nothing more than to be a mom. My primary toy was dolls, and even into adolescence I would fantasize that someone would leave an infant on our doorstep, and that my parents would allow me to raise it! So when I found myself a mother at the young age of 20, I was both scared and thrilled; I could finally fulfill my fantasy of settling down to a "Father Knows Best" kind of existence. (I was too naïve then to see the irony of using a show with that title as my model of motherhood!)
But unfortunately, like most mothers, I had little knowledge about motherhood except the myths that had been handed down to me throughout my life: the myth of a mothering instinct inherent in every woman; the myth of unending patience and tenderness; and the myth of complete fulfillment through my children. And on some level, I knew that if I didn't live up to these myths - which I almost never did - I was a failure, both as a mother and as a woman.
In her book titled Mother, Warrior, Pilgrim, Jain Sherrard confesses that when she became a mother, she found herself "in the midst of a war….I felt like a foot soldier," she writes, "…untrained and unarmed, whose only weapons were a plethora of useless mythologies regarding what it meant to mother."
A poignant example of that experience is found in a letter to "Dear Abby" which I've kept in my files for years, written by a 35-year-old woman who, with her husband, had adopted a three-month-old baby girl after a very long wait; she was their first child. Ecstatic at first, the woman told Abby that after about a month, "reality set in:" "I began to resent the baby…." she wrote. "I became angry and resentful when she cried and fussed. My husband was no help at all. I felt myself slipping out of control, and I worried that I might even hurt the baby."
When her social worker visited, the woman became hysterical and admitted the difficulty she was having. Instead of offering compassionate and understanding, or finding help for her, the social worker told the woman that "not every woman is 'cut out' for motherhood," and removed the child from the home. The woman said she felt like a failure.
And then she wrote: "My main concern is what to do with all the baby furniture and clothing….Please hurry your answer. I can't stand to see all these things around."
Still today, that letter breaks my heart. For I remember those feelings the woman described. I remember what a failure I felt as a young mother, and how vulnerable I was to my own sense of frustration. And while I absolutely agree that not every woman is "cut out for motherhood," I wonder how different it might have been for that mother who wrote to "Dear Abby" - how different it might have been for me, and thus for my daughter - had the expectations of motherhood been more realistic and therefore more humane.
After acknowledging that motherhood felt like combat to her, Jain Sherrard suggests that mothers are indeed warriors, in the sense that Don Juan defined the word: someone who "balances both terror and wonder." And then she contends that what we really are, are Pilgrims - in that we embark on motherhood with no maps; we must cover long and hazardous distances; our final destination is always in doubt; and the journey is for the rest of our lives! As Florida Scott-Maxwell suggested in our Meditation this morning, no matter how old we and our children are, we moms continue to look for "signs of improvement" in them!
Perhaps I'm not the only woman who has resented Mother's Day, and wished it would go away. According to our Office Administrator, Jennifer Byrom, who owned a restaurant before coming to work for us, Mother's Day is known in that business as "Alcohol Consumption Day!" And I must admit that for many years, I would say that the best Mother's Day I ever had was the one spent not with my children, but with three other divorced women, in a bar in Berkeley, getting horribly drunk (thank goodness for Berkeley public transportation!), and reminiscing about the tribulations of motherhood, and dastardly deeds of ex-husbands and lovers. It was incredibly liberating.
But I no longer claim that as my best Mother's Day. For my resentments about the myths of motherhood have mellowed over the years, as has my resistance to Mother's Day. I think my children may be disappointed at that, as I now expect them to do something nice for me each year, which I never did before. But they know I expect nothing big; something tantamount to a spatula will do! Mostly I just want to be with them, and delight in watching them as they parent my grandchildren. Those are now my favorite Mother's Day celebrations.
And I delight in watching other young parents with their children. Things have improved since I gave birth to my daughter some 38 years ago: We are more honest about the complexities of mothering, and the variety of emotions inherent in the task; there are many more resources for beleaguered moms, as well as for their children; and fathers today are generally far more involved than they were 30 years ago (thanks, I might add, to the feminist movement). Indeed, the idea that the mother is always the main parent is no longer assumed; it was my children's father who took on the responsibility of parenting when I entered Seminary, and this scenario is becoming more common, though still unusual.
We must not forget, however, the number of mothers who still face challenges above and beyond motherhood itself, through no fault of their own: The challenges of poverty, or abuse, or depression; the injustice of homophobia towards lesbian mothers; and still the occasional raised eyebrows towards those who choose unconventional paths. They deserve to be celebrated today no less than others. As Sherrard notes, we are all about the "business of raising human lives."
No matter one's situation, motherhood remains fraught with complex emotions. It's a rare mother, I think, who isn't haunted by guilt and regret, no matter how "good" a mother she's been. We never think we've been good enough. And as we wrestle with who we are as mothers, we wrestle, too, with who our own mothers were - facing the need to forgive them as we try to forgive ourselves. (I once saw a pillow that I wanted to send to every woman I know, embroidered with the words: "Mirror, mirror, on the wall; I have become my mother after all!")
So in recognition of the complexities, I offer you this slightly-adapted "prayer" of sorts that my older sister - one of the best moms I know - sent me recently:
For the mothers who have sat in rocking chairs for hours on end soothing crying babies who can't be comforted;
For the mothers who show up at work with spit-up in their hair and milk stains on their blouses and diapers in their purse; and for those who provide what mothering they can from far away;
For the mothers who run carpools and make cookies and sew Halloween costumes; and all the mothers who don't;
For the mothers who give birth to babies they'll never see, and the mothers who give those babies homes;
For the mothers who yell at their kids in the grocery store and even swat them in despair when they stomp their feet and scream for ice cream before dinner; and for all the mothers who count to ten instead, but understand how child abuse happens;
For the mothers who teach their children to tie their shoelaces before they start school, and for all the mothers who opt for Velcro instead;
For the mothers who teach their sons to cook and their daughters to sink a jump shot;
For the mothers whose children have gone astray, who can't find the words to reach them;
For the mothers who taught their children to be peaceful, and now pray they come home safely from a war;
For the mothers who have lost their child in a store and hugged them when they've been found; and for those who have lost their child to death and can no longer hug them;
For the mothers of disabled children, who love them no less, and who use every extra moment to advocate for them;
For the lesbian mothers struggling to give their children a normal life, while explaining why people are telling them their moms aren't "normal;"
For the mothers living on the "edge" of society, struggling to raise their children with love while facing the walls of poverty, racism, violence and fear;
For the mothers who have sent their children off into adulthood, only to now be raising those same children's children;
For working mothers, and for stay-at-home moms - who have earned the title "working mothers;"
For single mothers and married mothers...
Mothers with money, mothers without...
For young mothers stumbling through diaper changes and sleep deprivation, and mature mothers learning to let go;
Let us give thanks.
Let us love and celebrate them all; and let us work toward a world that ensures that every woman's choices are honored, and every mother is given the means to do her job well.
In this way will we all, mothers and fathers, be able to send forth our children, as living arrows, in gladness and wisdom and peace.
© 2004 Anne Felton Hines. All rights reserved.
