Mother

I have given myself the following assignment: describe the word mother.  This has proven to be a more difficult task than I assumed it would be.  Mother is a word we all know, but, mother, who she is, what she is, and what she means, has a great degree of variation between us.  I was buying cards this week, which is a difficult task, as my daughter is currently at the age where one must distract her, at all times, from her desire to climb out of the shopping cart, proceed to run aimlessly through the large shopping store, hiding, playing, and eating fish crackers.  So, as I was trying to quickly pick out cards, distracting her with pictures of puppies and kitties, I hear a man saying to a stranger, “This is always so hard.  None of these quite say what I want to say. I haven’t felt like this about my mom in a long time”.  The stranger stated that she felt the same way and they came to some sort of agreement that they always go with the most generic “Happy Mother’s Day” card they can find, since the rest of them are so false in their sentiments.  I was, at first, astonished that such a personal conversation transpired between two strangers, and then I thought, ‘God, I hope that is never how my kids feel about me’.  I went into a ten minute depression in the aisles of Target thinking about all the possible ways my children may grow up to hate me and have to find the Mother’s Day card which reflects the least amount of love and respect.  This feeling  passed, thankfully, yet, the fact remains: some people hate their mothers, or maybe just don’t really love them all that much, or don’t know them, never knew them, chose to leave them, didn’t choose to leave them, etc., etc., etc. I mean the truth of the matter is, there are probably more people picking out the most generic card they can find than there are people trying to find the one card that truly captures the warmth, love, and far-surpassing greatness of their mother.  I realize I have traveled down a rather depressing route, and it’s not where I wanted to take you.  Let’s not stay here long then.  When I think back on my own experiences, and probably, when most of us think back on our childhood, our first memories center around one person in particular, the person who was always there: mom.  In those early moments, I felt heard and understood, but mostly, I just felt safe.  I was in my mother’s arms, and for me there was no good or bad, but only the protection and provision by my parents, and my brother. 

In the caramelly background of the early 80’s, I have another very specific memory.  I remember holding my mom’s neck as I fell asleep.  I did that a lot.  I remember the soft warmth of her skin.  She would ask me why I did it, and I would tell her, “Your neck feels like coffee, Mama”, because how else does a two-year-old describe warmth?  I imagined the warm coffee gliding down her throat just moments before I placed my hand there, preparing the comfort I was about to feel.

 

I think back on those moments when I hold my daughter or hug my son.  Will this be the most secure they ever feel?   They run to me when they are scared, and they hug me when they’re tired.  Why do they do this?  Harry Harlow ran a series of experiments in the 1950’s to investigate the nature of love.  He put baby rhesus monkeys into cages and recorded how much time they spent on a soft, terrycloth mother (not a real mother) versus time they spent on a wire mother, who also happened to have a bottle strapped to her (again, not a real mother – he separated them from their real mothers after birth – not exactly something that has made him popular).  Even though the wire monkey provided all of the baby’s nourishment, the baby monkey preferred the terry cloth mother, spending the majority of its day clinging to her.  Harlow stated “"These data make it obvious that contact comfort is a variable of overwhelming importance in the development of affectional response”.  So, we need comfort to develop love.  It’s obviously more than that, otherwise all children would need is a blanky and they’d be set, but oddly enough, when I describe mother, the first words, and the best memories, all involve this feeling of warmth, of comfort, of love.  Our parents give us this sense of security.  Right now it is storming outside, and my three-year-old is fine.  He is afraid of the storm, but he feels safe.  So then, what is mother?  Mother is warmth.  She gives us the security and love that we need to feel confident to be who we were intended to be.  Mother is love.  Mother is comfort, and safety.  She is encouragement and understanding.  Maybe she wasn’t this to you.  Maybe someone else was.  Maybe mother was father, or mother was sister, brother, grandma, grandpa, cousin, or friend.  I have found mothers in all stages of my life.  My real mother, of course, but I remember my first teacher, how she made us all feel safe with her kind words: she was mother.  My friends in graduate school who supported me and helped me realize we would all make it through together: they were mother.  My husband, who stands by me in all of my failures, bandages my kid’s skinned knees, and defends me to those who try to drag me down: he is mother.  Those of us who are “mothers” are incredibly lucky to be given the chance to be mother and to be celebrated once a year simply for doing our best to live up to this name.  So, to all of you who are mothers in the literal sense, and to all of you that mother, in the less literal sense, I hope you feel as treasured and loved as you are.  I hope you get the card with flowers and gushy sentiments.  Most of all, I hope you feel as much love as you give.  Happy Mother’s Day.