Mother’s day is over for another year, but I’ve been reflecting on it as I’ve read all the kudos and gratitude and, yes, grousing about it on the internet. I don’t “celebrate” it and we didn’t teach our kids to pay much attention to it either. There’s a bunch of reasons for that:
In addition to the living children I have and whom I cherish and take an enormous amount of pride and joy in, there are three: James, Tabitha and Juvenal who didn’t make it long enough to be born. I remember them every day of my life, and think about them a lot.
My mother is dead, and when she was alive, she abused both my brother and myself and left us with deep and lasting wounds. And even though, over the course of my life, I’ve realized that she did the best she could with the world’s smallest “good mother” toolkit, and deeply regretted the pain she caused us, I don’t have a really strong inclination to either mention her or celebrate her mothering of my brother and me on this day.
Yet, while I don’t think of Mother’s Day as a really great day, neither do I feel resentful that other people are celebrating their relationships with their mothers, or missing the ones who have died, or mourning the children they’ve lost. I don’t feel left out or as if I’m somehow cheated and marginalized because everybody’s going ga-ga over their mothers or remembering their lost little ones. In fact, I’m happy to see that so many people can appreciate the work that goes into being a mom, that they recognize, even if only one day of the year, that it’s hard work, and it takes dedication, commitment and a lot more energy than anybody ever expected. I empathize with the mums who’ve also lost babies and children, and understand that it’s a bittersweet day for them, too.
What bothers me about it is when those like me, who had a less than stellar mother, or who’ve lost children, or, unlike me, never had ’em in the first place, jump up and down complaining that it’s wrong and somehow wicked for everybody else to have a good time and share the good parts of having been mothered, while it leaves them feeling sad and left out in the cold. Or who insist, like Anne Lamott, that it somehow marginalizes women who’ve chosen not to have children or that it “makes all non-mothers, and the daughters of dead mothers, and the mothers of dead or severely damaged children feel the deepest kind of grief and failure” while somehow perpetuating “the dangerous idea that all parents are superior to non-parents.”
I, the child of a dead, abusive mother, I, who most of the time feels like a failure as a mother, take issue with this. Having children isn’t the highest calling, it’s doesn’t make a parent superior to a non-parent and I’m not sure how a non-sentient day can pepetrate anything. Furthermore, I can attest, personally, that there is NOTHING on the outside of my skull that can make me feel more like a failure than the thoughts already squirreling around on the inside of my skull. I suspect the same is true for most people who feel like failures. It’s the voices INSIDE our heads we have to shut up, not the ones having a good time on the outside.
That’s what bothers me most about this: the implication that because somebody somewhere is having a horrible time on a celebratory day, because of the day, we should ban the day. That because some of us don’t happen to have good associations with motherhood, nobody should celebrate it, because, goodness knows, we don’t want anybody to feel excluded or bad or anything as awful as grief. I have news for you: grief is a part of life, and while the pain and the empty space inside never completely go away, you can come to terms with it, you can deal with it and find joy and happiness in other parts of your life. Yes, certain days, certain colours, certain places, certain songs will always trigger the tears, but honestly, I’d rather have that than feel nothing at all. It’s a part of being alive and it means that inside me, that person still lives.
So, my suggestion is that if you don’t want to or you don’t enjoy celebrating Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Parent’s Day, Valentine’s Day or any other Day, go find other people who feel the same way you do, and do something with them that will let you be happy. Let those who do want to find joy in the day, do so without raining on their parade.
HAPPY MON-DAY! And to all the mothers out there: I hope you had a stellar day.
Bevnal Abbey Scriptorium 