May 11, 2003

From Nobel Laureates to Presidents; successful CEOs to mailroom messengers; and from Hollywood celebrities to the little guy on the street, mothers always remain a source of strong feelings and emotions

TODAY is Mother’s Day. Beyond hearts and flowers, what does it signify to Americans? The closest is a combo of crass capitalism and an indescribable love for mom.

However materialistic Americans may be, mothers always remain a source of strong feeling and emotion. From Nobel Laureates to Presidents; successful CEOs to mailroom messengers; Hollywood celebrities to the little guy on the street, it’s the same story: All testify to whatever they have achieved in life is due to their mothers, the centre of their universe.

Rare is a son or daughter whose eyes don’t well up when acknowledging the sacrifices and unconditional love they received from their mothers. She’s always mentioned in the beginning of a speech or a book. Fathers? Oh, forget them!

It took a determined housewife, 150 years ago, to shine light on the pathetic health conditions in the United States. And who better than mothers, Anna Jarvis thought, could drum up support. So, she designated a day and called it “Mother’s Work Day.” After her death, her daughter — also named Anna — worked towards making her mother’s votive wish come true: “I hope and pray that someone, sometime, will found a memorial mother’s day. There are many days for men, but none for mothers.”

And 89 years to this day, President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill recognizing Mother’s Day as a national holiday.

But here’s the irony: Crass capitalism subsumed the Day into a bumper sale day. With the increasing gift-giving activity, an embittered Anna Jarvis believed that the Day’s “sentiment was being sacrificed at the expense of greed and profit”, and truly wished she had never started this Mother’s Day tradition.

When the second Sunday of May arrives each year, hotels and restaurants are booked in advance, there’s heavy traffic at the florists and telephone lines are jammed as sons and daughters all across America honour and express their deep appreciation to their mothers.

Single moms are the norm today. The divorce rate here is around 50 per cent, which means one out of every two marriages ends in divorce! Think how many children lose out on having both their parents live under one roof? They get hardened. Some lose it and become dropouts.

Whatever the statistics, what is a mother really made up of? — here’s the story of one such mother: She always wondered if there’s a magic cutoff period when offspring become accountable for their own actions? Is there a wonderful moment when she can become a detached spectator in the lives of her children and shrug, “It’s their life,” and feel nothing? When she was in her 20s, she stood in a hospital corridor waiting for doctors to put a few stitches in her son’s head. She asked, ‘When do you stop worrying?’ The nurse said, ‘When they get out of the accident stage.’ Her mother, standing nearby, just smiled faintly and said nothing.

When she was in her 30s, she sat on a little chair in a classroom and heard how one of her children talk incessantly, disrupting the class, and was headed for a career making license plates. As if to read her mind, a teacher said, ‘Don’t worry, they all go through this stage and then you can sit back, relax and enjoy them’. Her own mother just smiled faintly and said nothing.

When she was in her 40s, she spent a lifetime waiting for the phone to ring, the cars to come home, the front door to open. A friend said, “They’re trying to find themselves. Don’t worry, in a few years, you can stop worrying. They’ll be adults.” Her mother just smiled faintly and said nothing.

By the time she was 50, she was sick and tired of being vulnerable. “I was still worrying over my children. I continued to anguish over their failures, be tormented by their frustrations and absorbed in their disappointments. My friends said that when my kids got married I could stop worrying and lead my own life. I wanted to believe that, but I was haunted by my mother’s warm smile and her occasional, ‘You look pale. Are you all right? Call me the minute you get home. Are you depressed about something’?” Her mother worried for her.

Can it be that parents are sentenced to a lifetime of worry? Is concern for one another handed down like a torch to blaze the trail of human frailties and the fears of the unknown? She asks. “Is concern a curse or is it a virtue that elevates us to the highest form of life? One of my children became quite irritable recently, saying to me, ‘Where were you? I’ve been calling for three days and no one answered. I was worried’. I smiled a warm smile. The torch has been passed.”

Sheila Kronisch, a mom of four kids — all married — is a jovial Jewish housewife who says proudly that her children love her and need her even today. “My youngest is a boy, Matthew, 38, who is an attorney and works for the Department of Defence in Washington. He calls me past 11pm at times and says, ‘I need to talk to you mom, I need to relax and you’re the only person I can talk to at this hour’.”

She’s proud of the fact that her son is “not afraid to let his mother know that he needs her.” As an Orthodox Jew, who has five children, he calls Sheila and his two older sisters every Friday before the start of Sabbath. “He’s a good man, an excellent father and a loving husband who believes in not hurting anybody or talking ill of anyone.”

Her two daughters who live in New Jersey always make their mother feel very special on Mother’s Day: “They know that I don’t care for expensive gifts, nor do they bring any. They turn up with small things like scented soaps, flowers or plants. The greatest treat for me is to spend the whole day in the company of my children and 11 grandchildren,” glows Sheila.

Nafis Sadik, who lives in New York and works as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS in Asia is a mother of five — three of her own and two adopted. “Mother’s Day has no religious significance — it’s universal and meant to honour mothers. What I don’t like about it is its materialistic side, your children having to give you expensive presents. My children send me cards because they know I don’t expect anything more from them.” But beyond the Western symbolism of idolizing moms here, what concerns her most is the fear of mothers in South Asia at risk of getting AIDS through their husbands.

A native of Pakistan, Dr Sadik has never shied away from speaking the truth. She’s appalled by the silence and stigma surrounding AIDS in South Asia. “It’s time for leaders in India and Pakistan to speak out. It concerns the most private and personal area of our lives, because as we know, most infections are passed on through sexual contact. Husbands pass it on to wives, commercial sex workers pass it on to men who use their services, older men pass it on to adolescent girls, men pass it to each other.”

Shahnaz Lockwood, another Pakistani who raises funds for the LRBT (Layton Rahmatulla Benevolent Trust) remembers vividly how her two little girls would give her cards each Mother’s Day. Married to David Lockwood, a senior UNDP official in New York, says Shahnaz. “Now that they are grown-up with one of them becoming a mother recently, they value me even more.”

Happy Mother’s Day!

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)