Reflections on Mother’s Day

MICHELE MARR

“All that I am or hope to be, I owe to my mother.”

-- ABRAHAM LINCOLN

I’d rather go to the dentist than shop, especially since I found

the world’s best dentist with a staff just as good right here in

Huntington Beach. But a couple of weeks ago I was forced to make a

rare trip to the mall to get a few articles of clothing I could no

longer civilly do without.

From card stores to kiosks, camera and candy shops, jewelry stores

and anchor department stores, the place was one enormous ad for

sure-fire gifts for Mother’s Day. Diamond stud earrings, boxes of

chocolates, gold chains or digital camera cellphones -- whatever your

mother might have a hankering for, it was all on sale.

If some legends have it right, Anna Jarvis, the woman credited

with originating Mother’s Day, is rolling over in her grave with

disgust at the commercialization of the day, but I doubt it.

Among the things Jarvis expressed as the purpose for Mother’s Day

was, “[to] by words, gifts, acts of affection and in every way

possible, give [your mother] pleasure, and make her heart glad every

day.”

Above all, she hoped “to make us better children by getting us

closer to the hearts of our good mothers ... to have them know we

appreciate them, though we do not show it as often as we ought ... to

revive the dormant filial love and gratitude we owe to those who gave

us birth.”

A few days later, as I read the front page of the morning paper, I

was struck by just how thankful we should be that our mothers did

give us birth, especially those of us who were born after 1973.

Above the fold of the paper, a color photo showed a sea of women,

an estimated 500,000 to more than a million, some of them mothers

with their daughters, crammed into the National Mall in Washington,

D.C., for what, it seems, was euphemistically called “the March for

Women’s Lives.”

They were there to lobby against what they see as “government

backsliding on the issue of reproductive freedom for women in the

United States and around the world,” the accompanying story said;

they were there to lobby for abortion rights. “My Body, My Choice” as

many placards read.

But “my body, my choice,” leaves out another body involved in a

choice for abortion: the body of a dependent child. Call it an

embryo. Call it a fetus. From conception, it’s a human life. If its

development is uninterrupted, a child is what it fully becomes.

Which is why, I suspect, according to a poll recently released by

Zogby International, only 13% of Americans support an unrestricted

policy of abortion on demand. A study commissioned by former Planned

Parenthood president Faye Wattleton found that seven out of every 10

women would like to see abortion more restricted, with a majority of

those seven women preferring to ban abortion in just about all cases.

Perhaps they are especially cognizant that, if their mothers,

saying “my body, my choice,” had chosen abortion, it would have cost

them their lives.

While Mother’s Day is not truly a religious holiday (my Webster’s

dictionary defines it simply as “the second Sunday in May, a day set

aside in honor of mothers) it’s a rare congregation that doesn’t

observe it. It’s no coincidence that the observance falls on a

Sunday.

The idea was born in a Sunday school class taught by Ann Marie

Jarvis, Anna Jarvis’ mother. After teaching a lesson on mothers of

the Bible, Ann Marie Jarvis led a prayer that concluded, “I hope that

someone, sometime will found a memorial mothers’ day commemorating

her for the matchless service she renders to humanity in every field

of life. She is entitled to it.”

Anna Jarvis vowed that “by the grace of God,” her mother would

have what she prayed for. The first Mother’s Day was observed on May

12, 1907 at Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, W.Va.,

home of the Jarvis family. Seven years later, during Woodrow Wilson’s

presidency, a joint resolution was passed, officially naming the

second Sunday in May Mother’s Day.

It was my generation, in embracing the women’s movement, that

grievously denigrated motherhood. As young college students, we

learned from Ms. Magazine and women’s studies classes to more highly

value our independence and our careers.

Students who yearned to be both a wife and a stay-at-home mother

were chided: “Is that all you want to do with your life?” In that

nascent march for women’s lives, our mothers were portrayed to us as

“nothing but” housewives and mothers.

Jacqueline Kennedy once said, “If you bungle raising your

children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much.”

This column is dedicated to all mothers who, like Kennedy, have

given motherhood that kind of value and who have given it their best.

I am thinking especially of mine. This Sunday, let’s give them our

deepest gratitude, our love and our prayers.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She

can be reached at [email protected].