May 9, 2021: Mother's Day

Mother: it’s a word rich with meaning, at least in the English language, and of course this is not an accident. It means “female parent,” sure, but it can also mean the source or origin, or it can mean something that is the extreme or ultimate of its kind. We use the word mother as a verb to mean a giving birth to something or someone, and also to describe behavior that reflects a special caring and/or protectiveness.

So much of how I move through the world is informed by the fact of my own motherhood, and all that it means, and also by the myriad ways I experience the power of motherhood—a force that can be intensely and alternately creative, loving, dynamic, gentle, Herculean, life-giving and so, so many other things—all around me every day.

Of course so many of my first, clearest glimpses of mothering and of motherhood were provided by my own beautiful Mother, who from my earliest childhood modeled profoundly important things like anti-racism (at a time when we really didn’t talk much about such things) without really meaning to.

This morning, while thinking about some of these things, I remembered something small from my growing up that made me smile, so I’ll share it here.

When I was a kid, Sandra Boynton cartoons were really popular, and sort of everywhere I looked. At some point my Mom bought a button with a Boynton cartoon of an elephant, looking exasperated, with a bunch of turkeys all over and on top of it. Maybe some of you remember it? The caption, naturally, read, “Don’t let the turkeys get you down.” The button sat stuck in the bulletin board by the phone in the kitchen, where, over the course of many moons, phases, moves, meals, arguments, and celebrations, it offered its simple pearl of good counsel to me whenever I happened to notice it. Then I grew up and moved out, and this tiny, passive thing, awash in countless, layered snippets of childhood memory, disappeared completely....until I became a Mom.

Until I needed just the right way of lightening up a heavy conversation with my own child when a friend had let them down. Until I looked for a way to lift up a friend/mother who was feeling judged for this thing or that. Until I struggled to right myself after a hard day in the parenting arena (some days I count my own chickens as turkeys). The words on Mom’s little button had become a kind of mantra for all of us way back then, and here it was now—ready, waiting, a tiny fragment of my own raising remade, fresh and relevant, by my motherhood: Never, ever let the turkeys get you down.

Today I honor the many spectacular mothers I know, and all the many ways that we love, teach and “mother” each other every day—in every sense of that word.

But especially I honor the Mom pictured below, in whose lap I sat so many years ago, loved and mothered so well, unaware of all the lessons I was learning.

Happy Mother’s Day!