Mother's Day, 2020

Mothering

“When my friends began to have babies and I came to comprehend the heroic labor it takes to keep one alive, the constant, exhausting tending of a being who can do nothing and demands everything, I realized my mother had done all those things for me before I remembered. I was fed; I was washed; I was clothed; I was taught to speak and given a thousand other things, over and over again, hourly, daily, for years. She gave me everything before she gave me nothing.”

Rebecca Solnit (The Faraway Nearby)

          Today is Mother’s Day, 2020. Some of us will not be able to visit or talk to our mother because of the coronavirus, or because she is no longer with us. Today, I want to dig a little deeper than the Hallmark sentiments about mothers, because, just like us, our mothers are/were regular human beings with all the dots and dashes of any other.

I have found that folks typically fall into two categories when it comes to speaking about their mother—either they idolize and memorialize Mother as an ideal human being, or they demonize their moms for every sort of failure and neglect visited upon themselves. In other words, we tend to define our mother in terms of her relationship to us—as though that were her primary obligation and driving interest. I confess to having done this with my mother as well—I was quite good at listing all her failures when it came to me. Right up until her death, we constantly struggled to figure one another out without much success.

          I think for most of us, the task of separating our mother from ourselves is one of the most difficult and primary tasks of adulthood. I know people who act as though their mother is/was the goddess of the universe, with nary a flaw, and people who must have had consummate witches for mothers to hear them tell it. That is why I found Rebecca Solnit’s quote to be so insightful and provocative. Being able to separate out the role of mothering from the person of mother is important. Anyone who has mothered a child knows the monumental labor of love that it requires, not to mention the back-breaking work. It is constant, even after the child leaves home—and, too often, begins sending babies back for mama to raise, too.

My own mother had one child, my younger sister Missy, who had profound cerebral palsy and required constant care for fifty-one years. When I married, my father told me in no uncertain terms that I would not be sending my children to them for “summer camp” or get-away weekends—“Your mother already has more than she can manage.” And she did, believe me.

Our mothers have/had decades of caregiving, cooking, cleaning, tending to every detail of life to keep things running smoothly, all jobs that required way more than eight-hour days, for which they were not paid. And, many of them also had actual jobs outside the home for which they were paid the bare minimum. I’m saying all that to say this—cut your mama some slack. Try filling her shoes for a week and see what it takes out of you!

At this stage of life, I’m grateful that I had a mother. She did her best to take care of us and did very little to take care of herself. Truth be told, she had no time to consider taking care of herself and for that, I am sorry. Today is Mother’s Day. If your mother is still living, give her the love and respect she is due for giving you life, and for being “good enough” to get you to where you are today. And maybe, just maybe, you have also been a good-enough mother. Man or woman, childless or not, “Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation.” (Robert A. Heinlein, Have Space Suit—Will Travel). Happy Mother’s Day, all.

                                        In the Spirit,

                                        Jane