A Failed Mother’s Day Post

I’ve been having difficulty writing a blog post for Mother’s Day. My notebook is filled with stories about my mom, notes about the origin of the word mother, and experiences from my motherhood. But they just sit there with a debilitating heaviness, with an inadequacy that I can’t shake and I’m beginning to think that maybe it’s because I grew up in the fog of patriarchy where ONE Sunday a year is given to mothers; one day a year that isn’t exclusively about fathers, sons, hes, and hims. One day when Mother is said out loud, her stories told, and her body celebrated for the life she brings. That’s a lot of internalized pressure and I don’t want to blow it. 

I haven’t been to church in months but am still forced to grapple with the patriarchal muscle I’ve been exercising for the past 37 years and the weak, atrophied matrifocal muscle I’ve neglected for almost as long. I can’t seem to escape the patriarchal illusion that motherhood is limited and therefore needs to be protected, exalted, or memorialized in one great day or in one great way. But mothers are human and common and sometimes wonderful and sometimes terrible and always, every time, at the origin of life. That’s their magic that is forgotten in the commodification of motherhood in patriarchal systems.

I love the imagery of the Father God as the sun, the Mother God as the Earth, and their human children as trees that need sunlight and soil to grow. This balanced metaphor is beautiful . . . however, this was not my experience growing up as a woman in the LDS church where being a child of God is less like a tree and more like a bouquet: a bunch of blossoms cut from their roots and placed in a crystal vase. Bouquets are meant to be oohed and aahed over until they wilt and die without soil. They’re meant to look vibrant and beautiful but are unsustainable without their roots and the earth that holds them. 

As a human, my roots are from my mother. Everyone’s roots start within their mother. I forgot how beautifully common that is. My mom is not a commodity or a more important woman to be memorialized on Mother’s Day, she’s an aging human who did this miraculous thing for me by bringing me into this world with her body. She lives and breathes like every other person on this planet. She is a billion stories. And in my desperation to honor her on her one day, I forgot all that. I forgot my roots because all I ever see or hear about is the sun.

Patriarchy gives fathers and sons every Sunday. And allows them to live and choose and fail and flounder and teach and thrive in a million stories. Consequently, mothers and daughters traditionally have one day for their stories and therefore are reduced to just the few best ones. (Hence, my hypothesis for my inability to write a meaningful Mother’s Day post.) But when I step away from patriarchy, the language and stories of mothers are common and vital. Always. 

Anyway, Mary Oliver’s poem, “The Journey,” makes me think of my mom and how she fights her demons and always wins; my mom is a full-blown human on a journey to find herself. I dedicate this poem to her and to all the mothers who untangle themselves from the voices, expectations, and clawing hands of patriarchy; mothers who often forget their power, only to be awed by it (and awe everyone around them) again and again. I love you.

The Journey
By Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations–
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Photo by Zoe Schaeffer on Unsplash