Mother's Day

I celebrate having given birth three times.  Some diapers, some milk thrown up, some fevers with worries in the middle of the night, some concerns when teens didn't come home when they said they would, some joy at seeing who they partnered with as adults, and even more joy as 2 of these sons and partners became fathers and I am now the grand-mother of 6 grandchildren.

One son asked what I'd like for Mothers Day.  I didn't have a good answer.  The other 2 sons are probably too busy to ask, and will just give me a phone call sometime in the evening.  But as the old saying goes, "what's a mother to do?"

This post is celebrating motherhood.  I look out my window and see birds who are busy making babies, feeding babies, raising their next generation.  My flower pots are full of beautiful blooms.

I was going to buy some more geraniums, because last year all of mine died during the damp summer.  But where I shopped today didn't have any small geraniums, just a huge planter of them.  I have planters.  I'm a potter, of course I've got planters!  They don't always work, as happened with the blight of last year.  But I've fresh dirt and hopefulness.  I'll keep watching for geraniums, because I love their gay red colors.  I do have one that's red, and one that's shocking pink.  I just want more.  They are so easy to bring inside in the winter and keep their blooming going.

It is about to rain, with fresh winds skittering here and there, and clouds darkening the light coming through the window.

With blended families, there are lots of children with step-mothers.  But we each only get one mother, whose womb created a sweet growing soft egg in which we could grow into babies...and then we were each on our own, so to speak.  Of course baby people are so useless at birth, they need constant care and attention.  But it can come from anyone.  That first 9 months of life is totally dependent upon one other life...a mother.  That swollen belly that somehow can shrink almost back to flatness between her hipbones...and those breasts that drip with milk when a baby cries, usually our own...but sometimes milk will "let down" to the sound of another hungry infant.  What a great design mothers' bodies have.

I celebrate my mother's life also.  She was an exceptional woman, and I don't often think of her and her struggles, or even her joys and passions.  I don't know what she was holding in the picture below, taken around 1935 of my father and mother.

I inherited a lot of her qualities...love of flowers, ability to grow many of them, love of cats, love of needlecraft, ability to cook, able to organize, able to do boring things over and over when required, able to be a hostess to give joy to others, love of games (cards especially), ability to survive when the going gets tough, perseverance for a greater goal, ability to laugh right out loud or giggle, an inquiring mind, love of mathematics, love of semantics, deeply romantic and idealistic, and sometimes knowing when to keep my mouth shut.

me a mother!

I've been a mother for 50 years, as evidenced by Marty, who's birthday is in a few weeks time.

His younger brother, Russ, just made sure I would get to celebrate Mother's Day the second Sunday in May every year.

 

And of course now I'm a grandmother!

And there's youngest son, Tai, who shared my blog yesterday...HERE>

Happy Mother's Day

In honor of my mother, Mataley Mozelle Webb (Munhall) Rogers, 1917-2003.

I figure we all want to be remembered with the choice of being young and at our "prettiest." 

There are plenty of pictures of my mother after she had us kids, when she worked most of her life to put us both in a private school that she believed was the best available, or when she again was a homemaker for the last part of her life.  Of course the entire time she worked, she also kept house and was the primary disciplinarian of my sister and myself.  (I think my father was the source of muscle when we needed to be spanked, with hairbrush, or maybe once with a belt, but I'm pretty sure he was being directed by my mother.)

I've given a brief biography and more pictures of her  HERE when she had her birth anniversary in March.

But to be honest, I must say my mother and I didn't get along.  Most of our lives we talked superficially usually about children, recipes, and homes,   She believed that children are closer to their grandparents than their own parents, as she was.  I don't think she got along well with her mother at all.  Since we'd moved far away from my grandparents, I really didn't get to test her theory out after I was 8.  She was closer with my younger sister than me, and especially with her granddaughter.  Again, geography and the influence of the 60s and 70s, meant that my sons weren't particularly close to her either.  I'm afraid I didn't urge them to have any positive relationship either.

My mother (and father) were of a certain religion which meant they were intolerant of some of my own views.  They were politically opposite of me in a time when young people were demonstrating against a lot of things, (the war in Viet Nam, Civil Rights, American Indian rights, issues about the environment etc) and I was living in many of the ways that they didn't approve. 

I found her very judgmental during my adult life, and not accepting of myself or my children.  Our life-long correspondence was often stilted, and she wrote in a kind of shorthand that was sometimes difficult to decipher.  She would offer me different amounts of funds in CD's with her as co-signer, but then would dis-own me and remove me from those sources of money.  This left me greatly in debt when I'd been counting on those funds to help.  I don't actually remember why she disowned me, but it was done many times throughout our bitter disagreements. 

But she was my mother.  I suddenly realized today that half of what I am is from my father, and half from my mother, at least originally.  I guess I've taken that beginning person and changed myself a lot.  I owe her my life, my birth, and the nurturing of me for the first couple of decades of my life. 

She was a very strong woman.  She had been raised by women who were also strong, who definitely were active for women's voting rights, who made their way in a world where their talents were limited to certain areas.  I'd say I first learned to believe in women's rights from my mother.

Since I've studied goddesses in the last 20 years, I've found a great ritual that some circles of women hold.  We will say our names, then say "the daughter of _____ who was the daughter of ____ who was the daughter of_______."  We go back as many generations of mothers and daughters as we know.  Some of us say we're the sister of another woman also, or even the mother of our female children.  It's a inspiring ritual, as well as an attempt to honor the line of mitochondrial DNA, which is how it can actually be traced genetically.  It is also subverts the ancient rites of our patriarchal society whereby women change to their husband's names, where genealogical trees follow the male ancestors, and where a child takes the father's name. 

I'm glad that my sister returned to her grandmother's maiden name when she decided to change her name.  I'm glad that I returned to my own maiden name later in my life after having been divorced.  We are more of our own persons, for whatever reason that might have motivated us.

I salute my mother, this year especially on Mother's Day.