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Mothering about a lot more than giving birth

Batch Data Processor | Friday, May 11 2007 10:30 PM

Last Updated: Friday, May 11 2007 10:35 PM

"Hush, little baby, don't say a word

Mama's gonna buy you a mockingbird ..."

Everybody needs a little mothering.

As we prepare to celebrate Mother's Day Sunday, to honor the women who birthed us and to shower them with flowers and cards and gifts, we perhaps can take a moment to recognize that no matter how old we get, we never really outgrow the need for mothering. We may ourselves be old hands at mothering, and yet we still, in difficult times, crave a mother's touch, and a mother's love.

"Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not," wrote the author James Joyce, with typical Irish cheer. Perhaps more accessible are the lyrics of "A Song for Mama," in which Boyz II Men offer a more contemporary version of Joyce's maternal tribute: "You took up for me / When everyone was downin' me."

Though the world may be against us, we know our mothers are always for us. As the end of the "Mockingbird" lullaby reassures us, no matter what disaster happens, "you'll still be the sweetest little baby in town."

When we are teenagers, we begin to pull away from our mothers. We think we can't wait to move out of the house, to leave home, to enjoy the freedom to stay up late and not eat our vegetables and make our own, possibly bad, decisions. Then we hit our first on-our-own crisis, a high fever or a bounced check or a broken heart, and we secretly yearn for our mothers to make everything all better. We remember the days of our mothers passing a cool hand over our hot foreheads, and we want to go back. We want to reverse time and shrink to the size of a 6-year-old. If things are really bad, we may want to return to the warm and simple safety of the womb. We want to be mothered.

Conversely, we all have within us the instinct to mother. If you have ever tiptoed past a grown man sleeping with a newborn baby cradled on his chest, you know exactly what I mean. The biggest, gruffest man and the coolest, surliest teenager will both succumb to the urge to nurture when the need presents itself. Somewhere deep inside, everyone has the caring gene. Sometimes the most unlikely people need a little mothering, and sometimes, you may be all they've got. Everyone can mother: the verb "to mother" is not, in spirit, exclusively female.

One of my favorite magazines is called Mothering. My subscription to Mothering has seen me through 25 years (and counting) of pregnancy, birth, and just about every kind of maternal crisis and joy. I am proud to say that Mothering was the first magazine in which my writing was published. The people who bought the magazine in the early 1980s once explained why, for the good of the cause of equality between the sexes, they hadn't given it a more evenhanded name; say, Parenting. A magazine called Parenting already existed, of course, but that was not the reason for keeping the name Mothering. Rather, it was for the connotative value of the word "mothering," which is warm and deeply nurturing in a way the more clinical connotation of "parenting" is not.

I quite agree. The concept of mothering is far broader than the anatomical possession of a uterus, or the physical act of giving birth. Mothering is an act of social justice, of compassion, of peace, of hope, of faith, and of love. It is an affirmation of all that is good and selfless about us.

I can think of several women who have been mentors and guides and friends to me, and who are themselves childless. I celebrate them on Mother's Day, along with my birth mother. The fact that they have never been pregnant does not mean that they are not life-giving women who enrich everyone they know in immeasurable ways. "Biology," says Oprah Winfrey, "is the least of what makes someone a mother."

There are so many ways to mother! Godmothers are the midwives of spiritual birth, helping us to mature in the ways of our faith. Room mothers are the angels of the classroom, providing teachers and students with sustenance and support. Foster mothers are the enfolders of the unplanned, offering their hearts and homes to their chosen children.

When my daughter participated in the "Junior Miss" program, there was a group of women backstage called the mother hens. Their job, for which they were paid nothing, was to help the nervous young participants with costume changes, makeup fixes, hairdo first-aid and moral support. They were equipped with the essentials: safety pins, Band-Aids, bobby pins, hair spray and positive vibes. Whether or not the mother hens were actually mothers in real life, they provided much needed backstage mothering.

Our language uses "mother" as an adjective of primacy. We speak the mother tongue of our country. We mine the mother lode. We expect aliens to arrive on a mother ship. We build our computers on the mother board. We care for Mother Earth, even as we live in fear and awe of Mother Nature. We call on the Mother of God in prayer. We refer to very important, superlative things as "the mother of all ... " (fill in the blank). And of course, an insult to one's mother is the mother of all insults.

But tomorrow is a day for compliments. Tomorrow, we will sign our cards and present our bouquets to our mothers. We may even serve them breakfast in bed (small hint). Let's also remember to wish everyone who mothers us a Happy Mothering Day.