This Mother’s Day marks the first time I celebrate it as a grandmother. The experience of being a nana like motherhood itself has been beautiful and complicated. Our daughter Maddie delivered baby Rosie three weeks early amidst concerns about her growth rate. A few days after giving birth, Maddie developed a severe infection and had to be hospitalized. She is home and healing well now but it was a scary moment. I wanted nothing more than to hold my own daughter close. Yes, being a mom is beautiful and complicated.
Mother’s Day originally was a call for peace born out of the deep love and concern for the lives of grown children. In June of 1872, Julia Ward Howe made her Mother’s Day Proclamation following the carnage of the American Civil War, “Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be of water or of tears! . . .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 to those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”
Howe’s proclamation deepens Mother’s Day for me. It is about so much more than cards and flowers. It is a call to care for one another’s children, no matter the nation or situation. A call to do what we can where we are to end suffering.
On Mother’s Day I always think of the women I spend time with at the St. Louis County Jail. I lead a Bible study on Monday afternoons there. We always end up talking about their kids. According to the US Department of Justice statistics over 80% of the women in jails are mothers and the vast majority are nonviolent offenders unable to afford bail.
On Monday afternoons in the program room, we spend our time together checking in, reading scripture and end our time with them sharing some of their dreams. For many of the women their dreams are vivid. I always encourage them to write them down.
The last time I was at the jail one of the women shared a powerful dream. She was in a forest with her mother. It was damp and low light. There were fungi all over the dying trees on the ground. She kept hearing her mother’s voice saying, “Don’t be afraid . . “
She couldn’t really understand the dream at first, but then we talked it through. What does fungi do? It breaks down trees and returns them to the earth. They then can become something new. Could this be a dream of transformation? Her face lit up. And her mother was there all the time telling her it was going to be okay.
As we talked more, she shared that she was about to make some big changes in her life. She was planning a move to the Twin Cities to be near her son. The Twin Cities would be a place where she could find more work. She was a sheet rock worker. She was part of the union, paid her dues and so she knew she would be able to find more work in the Cities than there was for her on the Iron Range.
I hope that she can trust the message that came to her in her dream. I think it helped that she kept hearing the voice of her mother.
May we listen to the calls of the mothers. “Arise, then, women of this day!” and “Don’t Be Afraid.” Yes, being a mother is so beautiful and complicated.
