my mom and other mothers

Happy belated Mother’s Day! 

Established with the noblest of intentions, Mother’s Day is bittersweet for so many women:
            Mothers who’ve lost a child, barren women
            Mothers whose children never call, estranged by geography or temperament
            Women who have never had children, by choice or not
            Women who’ve never married
            Women who are divorced or widowed and have no one to make their day spec                         because their children are too small or oblivious to the celebration
            Women with challenging or difficult mothers or mothers-in-law
            Women who have lost their mothers, or who can’t call their mothers because it’s too
               triggering
            Military moms and missionary moms whose children are overseas.
            Proud as they are of their children’s service, this is a lonely day.
            They miss their daughters, their sons
            Women who feel that this day is no longer for them, or that it never was

As Jesus was hanging on the cross and gasping out his last words, he looked at the woman who had raised him.  The Apostle John was standing by her side, sharing this moment of horror and bewilderment.  Jesus saw them both.  Words were at a premium, his lungs filling with fluid. 

“When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, ‘Woman, here is your son,’ and to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’  From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.”   John 19:26-27 

These are the last words he spoke except “I am thirsty” and “It is finished”.  These words were personal words choked out for the two people he loved the most.  But they probably wouldn’t have been recorded and repeated if they didn’t have significance for us all.  What is that significance? 

Best selling novelist Virginia Evans recently said that her main character in The Correspondent, a lifelong letter writer in her waning years, came to her fully formed, extrapolated from older women she had known and trusted.  Evans said that women in their 70s and 80s make her feel like everything will be OK.  In their life experience they had already seen it all.  “What is there to fear anymore?”   is their attitude, their wisdom super-power.  These women make Evans feel safe. 

I’ve had extraordinary older women in my life:  stand-ins, substitute or replacement mothers, present at a time, in a way, offering a perspective that my own birth mother didn’t or wasn’t capable of providing.  I loved my birth mother, seen here on the right.  But I have also loved my proxy mothers like Monica and Elma, “salty broads” who were endlessly supportive, but would tell you exactly what they thought, no holds barred.  Or Betty, Ginny and Carole the sweet and kind ones, from whom I’ve never heard a cross or critical word about anyone.  Or Bonnie, here on the left who has always believed in me, that I can do anything I put my mind to.   These are the “Other Mothers”.  I know that you have them too.  We NEED many mothers to be many things, some who affirm us and some who challenge us.

 Poet Marilyn McEntyre describes Other Mothers like this:
            The woman who taught you to read
            The woman next door who came to your piano recitals
            The babysitter who played with you instead of watching TV
            The friend of your mom’s who knew how it was when mom didn’t
            The woman who clued you in when you were a newcomer at work
            The librarian who remembered what kind of books you liked
            The boyfriend’s mom who still liked you after you broke up
            The childless aunt who gave you her gift of mother-love
            The camp counselor who stayed in touch
            The old woman at church who prayed for you
            The woman who mentored you through your first pregnancy
            The professor who midwifed your intellectual rebirth
            The Girl Scout leader who listened to you giggle all night
            The 80-year-old elder who is your midlife role model
            The teacher who tutored you on her own time
            The stepmother who wasn’t wicked after all

I bet you can come up with more. My husband had a registrar who made sure he graduated from college, and an English professor who called him on a poem that he wrote, asking him if he was proud of what he’d written, then secretly submitted another of his poems to the Atlantic Monthly. 

So today I have an assignment for you:  Call your mom. 
Men, call your moms.  Don’t make your wives do it, or nag you into doing it.
Then think of the Other Mothers, particularly those who wouldn’t expect your call, and call them too.  This is after all, one of Jesus’ dying wishes—that his mother, that EVERY woman, would be received as somebody’s mentor-mother. 

Happy Mother’s Day.

Love, Liz