The Mother Thing

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

My daughter sent me flowers for Mother’s Day. I wish she hadn’t, they’re so ridiculously expensive and she could have used that money elsewhere, but I understand. I remember being busy raising kids and keeping things humming, far from my parents. I remember calling a florist on Mother’s Day, pressed for time and down to the wire.

I recall that the floral arrangement pleased my mother enormously — who ran out to get plastic flowers to replicate it for posterity — and so, in memory of her and gratitude that I am loved and remembered by my own girl-child, I too am pleased. (But I wish she’d bypassed this multi-billion dollar buying binge, aka the Hallmark Holiday, and saved her money for more important things. And now that I think about it, isn’t that what most mothers who fret about their children’s wellbeing would say? )

The woman who succeeded in convincing the nation to establish Mother’s Day in 1908 was single and had no children. Her name was Anna Jarvis, and it was her own mother, Anna Reeves Jarvis, who lit a fire under the mothers of West Virginia during the Civil War, founding Mothers’ Day work clubs to improve sanitation and lower infant mortality, as well as to tend wounded soldiers, Union and Confederate.

After the war, Anna Reeves Jarvis established a Mothers Friendship day, bringing together the mothers of soldiers from both sides, attempting reconciliation and renewed dedication to peace. Jarvis was unyielding in her determination that women, particularly mothers, could align themselves to impact their community toward resolving conflict by peaceful means, and particularly by mourning and remembering their fallen children.

It was not a new idea. Post-war, Julia Ward Howe — poet, abolitionist and social activist who wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” after meeting with Lincoln in the White House — had issued a Mother’s Day Proclamation as editor of her weekly suffragist magazine, Woman’s Journal, in 1870. In her early Proclamation, titled “Appeal to Womanhood Throughout the World” which promoted women’s inclusion in government, as well as the end of warring itself, she wrote:

Arise, then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, Whether our baptism be of water or of tears! 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! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence vindicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of council.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take council with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, man as the brother of man, each bearing after his own kind the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women, without limit of nationality, may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient, and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

Julia, a well-placed heiress and mother of six, was in an unhappy marriage to an older man who disapproved of her publishing activities and her opinions, which often reflected badly upon him. Her independence was so pronounced, that she and her husband separated at one point in the mid-1800s, although they reconciled after war’s end, apparently living separate lives under the same roof until his death in 1876.

That was when Julia discovered that her own considerable inheritance, given over to her husband’s control, had been badly managed through unfortunate investment. This was a time when a married woman’s ability to own property or control her own fiscal affairs was barely allowed, single women being the exception, although laws differed from state to state. Any modern woman who takes the time to look at women’s rights during the lives of her grandparents, and their parents, will be rightly shocked.

In fact, when the post-war congress came together to consider a mandate of equal rights for freed slaves, the notion of “coverture” — patriarchal ownership of the marriage partner — snarled up the conversation, pitting the concept of servitude through marriage against the emancipation of servitude by slavery. Congress was careful not to write the legislation too broadly and accidentally codify the rights of women along with those of (according to the 1860 census) close to four million slaves, previously owned by 8% of the American population.

If all this sounds too archaic for words, let’s (solemnly) remember that it was just 40 years ago that women were granted approval for credit in their own name, about the same time that they were provided pills for birth control and options for unwanted pregnancy. Two of those things are again on the line, and two out of three, in this instance, IS bad — very, very bad!

Thirty years after the death of her husband, Julia Howe was still advocating for women, while publishing profusely. When we talk about the history of women’s rights, it is necessary to discuss the accomplishments of Howe, who was essentially one of the mothers of the feminist movement, establishing women’s groups in all areas of social service and reform. At the age of 88, Julia Ward Howe became the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She died three years later, and her biography, written in collaboration by her children, won a Pulitzer Prize. History remembers her as a notable and remarkable woman, in a time when her gender was a detriment to her ambitions.

As for Anna Jarvis, upon her mother’s death in 1905, she decided to press her community to establish a day in remembrance of one’s mother, to celebrate and appreciate — each, individually — the lives of those who had nurtured and shaped them into adulthood, passing along the pacifist principles that exemplified women’s commitment to peace. The idea took shape, city by city, state by state, until 1914, when Woodrow Wilson set the second Sunday in May aside for the purpose of celebrating motherhood. It took commerce about twenty minutes to figure out the golden goose had just landed each May, well into the foreseeable future, institutionalizing the purchase of carnations and greeting cards, not to mention the additional gifting that has grown, year by year, since.

To her credit, Anna Jarvis had an immediate fit and fell in it. She insisted that the day was created as a day in celebration of one’s own mother (should she deserve it), not motherhood in general. She spent the remainder of her life, and a considerable fortune, fighting against the commercialization of the event by threatening lawsuits, organizing boycotts and vocal attacks on those who utilized Mother’s Day for fundraising and the like.

It would probably not surprise Anna (at least in theory) that today, Mother’s Day is a 20-billion-dollar industry, motivated too often by mixed feelings toward the family matriarch, and guilt, chiseled to a fine point, for ignoring her as best one can. It’s the third heaviest card exchange, just behind Christmas and Valentine’s Day, and the second in gifting, just behind Christmas. For many of us, Mother’s Day is a throw-away occasion, as has become Memorial Day and Labor Day, celebrated with cook-outs, coolers of cold beer and little understanding of the moment.

I doubt that more than a handful of people have heard — or, having heard, retained — that the second Sunday in May was a day proposed for both honoring the individual, as well as appreciation for a movement founded on public service to children and dedication to pacifism. One person who may have researched that history is the wealthy ex-governor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, who is dedicated to establishing common sense gun laws. Last year, Bloomberg put some 12 million of his own bucks into a campaign to convince the Senate to vote for mandatory background checks, to no avail. And this despite polls showing 91% of American voters in favor of mandatory checks, including 88% of gun-owning households.

This year, taking a clue from the über-successful Mothers Against Drunk Driving movement, Bloomberg has started an umbrella organization called Everytown For Gun Safety, ushering in members of various reform groups, most especially concerned mothers, to work against those politicians who refuse to vote for sensible gun laws. There’s every reason for mothers to have a particularly progressive outlook on this issue, since women, targeted in domestic violence, are three and a half times more likely to be murdered by an abusive partner than are men. Their children are endangered as well, especially in the current epidemic of school shootings, of which there have been sixty — 60! — since the tragedy at Newtown. Bloomberg’s bid to capitalize on women’s outrage and despair in the face of the NRA bravado regarding attacks upon their children may be just the thing to tip the balance.

Meanwhile, the idiots in states like my own — no, I won’t take it back — are attempting to nullify ANY gun control by the federal government, willing to go to war with the police force should they try to enforce any, and all this will occur should such a federal proclamation descend upon them (either from heaven like the Rapture, or hell like Sharia law). I believe it was the Kinks that sang, “Paranoia will destroy ya.” Looks like it will, too.

Considering how long women have pushed this boulder up the mountain (common sense versus militarism and violence), it’s tempting to just shrug and sigh, not bother to connect the dots back to those who centered their lives and activities around the betterment of their sisters, and their world, in decades past. Considering how long women have struggled toward equality (legal, ethical and civil, including rights over their own body function and sexuality), and especially now when we’re facing down the extreme influence of fundamentalist religion in our political process, it’s no doubt easier to hope for the best and not take the time to object in the most stringent of terms as these people attempt to turn back modernity.

I suppose it would be much more pleasant to just kick back, enjoy a generic Mother’s Day — send a card, make a call or receive one — and give ourselves a break. Well, sure, except …

Mother’s Day seems to me very much a Jupiter in Cancer kinda thing this year, and — oh my goodness — one vital leg of that cosmic Cross of ours, at 16+ degrees. Dane Rudhyar interprets this Sabian Symbol — The Unfoldment Of Multi-level Potentialities Issuing From An Original Germ — as an actualized life urge, a process of germination. The end of one expression with the crucifixion of the seed, and the beginning of another, the sprouting of the plant; hence, growth. Perhaps this is a time when the whole notion of ‘mother’ and ‘mothering’ could use another look.

Mothering is not a matter of lady bits, of gender obligations or religious duty. Some of the worst mothers I’ve ever heard of were forced into it, resentful, hostile and cold to their offspring, and they barely deserve a card or call tomorrow (although I suppose that if you’ve shared someone’s uterus with them for nine months, it’s a nice gesture). That’s an individual choice, of course. Some “thank yous” are lost on the recipient.

Essentially, mothering has more to do with the devoted shepherding of someone, or something, from infancy through growth and on into adulthood, than just carrying a child to term or establishing a proposal with no intention to complete it. This is nurture, part of the creative process that is inherent in the birthing of children, but not sex-specific. Neither is blood bond required for one human being to care for and guide another through life’s passages, teachers and caregivers and extended family. I know a number of men that are terrific at nurture and encouragement, so — you know — if your Dad was the nurturer, give a Mother’s Day call and be sure to thank him for picking up the slack. (You might need to whisper.)

The best argument for birth control is the lack of desire and commitment to such a project experienced by various disinterested women. Their creativity calls them elsewhere. With a renewed call for zero population growth, this should be no-harm, no-foul, although it’s rarely seen this way by those who want women to come in one size, shape (and very fecund) version. The world would probably be a less conflicted place if we matured into a better understanding of what motherhood actually entails.

So, then, for those readers who identify with the mothering energy and its expression in your life, I wish you a wonderful and blessed Mother’s Day. And for those who can find no resonance with their earthly family on this occasion, find someone who personifies nurture and thank them for their service to humanity. They are the antithesis of the destroyers, they serve from the heart and amplify love into the world.

And for those who have lost a child, or perhaps given one up due to circumstance, consider that life is much longer than we know, and these mysteries much greater. Nothing is ever truly lost to us if we keep it within our heart.

This Sunday, I’m going to admire my lovely flowers, miss my own mom who loved me unconditionally, and remember these amazing women who devoted themselves to the mental and emotional ‘differences’ of disposition that put them on the side of pacifism, that prompted them to work for an end to the bitter, unthinkable destruction of warfare that so wounded their nation and their century.

They were the seeds planted long ago, thick beneath our feet as a firm platform for learning to love one another into valued and valuable humankind. Now it’s our turn to grow this idea and this commitment into a new century and a new era, with an evolved and evolving understanding of the Great Circle composed of both life-giving and respect for all life.