Belated Mother's Day Thoughts

My earliest Mother’s Day memories involve flowers – not expensive bouquets or fancy corsages, but something much simpler. The flowers I remember were plain red and white carnations.

A since-abandoned tradition existed in the time of my childhood that my family adhered to every Mother’s Day: people whose mothers were still alive would wear one red carnation, while people whose mothers had passed would wear one white carnation. Living in sunny California, my grandmother had a few beautiful carnation plants in her front flowerbed. I remember going to her place each Mother’s Day before we all went to church together and getting adorned with my fresh and vibrant red flower. As a little girl, I felt so pretty!

I also remember the year that everything changed, and now I understand why. When I was 6½ years old, my grandmother lost her battle with cancer and went to heaven. Three months later on Mother’s Day, there were no carnations. Yes, our free supply was gone; but more importantly, my own Mom had crossed into new territory – and she wasn’t interested in wearing a white flower that publicly marked the loss of her mother. She was only 35 years old at the time.

Mother’s Day in the United States was begun officially by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914 in response to a grass-roots effort to honor mothers started by activist Anna M. Jarvis after her own mother’s death in 1905. (Interesting sideline: her mother’s favorite flower was the carnation, and Anna included hundreds of white carnations at a service for her mother in West Virginia in 1907.)

In the mid-1800’s, Anna’s mother Ann Reeves Jarvis (also an activist/reformer) organized Mothers’ Day Work Clubs in West Virginia in an effort to improve living conditions in poor Appalachian homes and lower the high childhood mortality rate. She also organized Mothers’ Friendship Day after the Civil War to promote peace between Union and Confederate families. Julia Ward Howe (best known for composing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”) carried on the peace effort with her Mother’s Day Proclamation in 1870 and by organizing a Mother’s Day for Peace to seek the eradication of all wars. Support lasted for about 30 years but died out in the face of the First World War in the early 1900’s.

Mother’s Day in the United States, then, has long been tied to the efforts of women promoting other women or important causes – including Coretta Scott King’s 1968 march for underprivileged women and children and other women’s causes like equal rights and access to childcare in the 1970’s. A disconnect has developed between this service-oriented mentality and the self-seeking Mother’s Day images portrayed today on social media. In our effort to present the best public impressions, we’ve at least partially lost sight of the true role of mothers and caring for others more than ourselves.

Let’s face it: social media can be brutal for those whose families don’t look like the pictures that are posted. I’m not against posting photos of happy families. I often do it myself. But as I thought about my own carnation memory, I decided that I want to be more sensitive to those whose lives don’t match the photos. For Mother’s Day, this means taking time to pray for:

·         those who have lost their Moms – especially recently

·         those who are experiencing infertility

·         those who have suffered a miscarriage

·         foster/adoptive Moms

·         those who have lost children to suicide or other means

·         those whose children are addicts

·         those whose children are wayward or lost

·         those whose children don’t live near them

·         those whose mothers treated them with cruelty

·         those who have difficult relationships with their mothers

·         those whose mothers abandoned them

·         those who were foster children or adopted

You see, as I realized with my own Mother’s Day experience as a young child, not everyone is always having a “Happy Mother’s Day” – and that’s okay. But I want to follow in the footsteps of earlier women who saw beyond themselves and put their efforts toward improving the lives of others. It’s really true that “the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world”; but my influence doesn’t have to stop just because my children are raised. I can still make a difference by how I treat others and by caring more about them than myself. And by praying for them . . .