Mothers Day on The Huffington Post

Modiba: Zap Mama: A Story Of ReCreation

2009-08-06T17:07:43Z

This is HuffPost World's regular feature that highlights interesting musicians and musical trends around the world. Know of a great musician doing ground-breaking work outside the United States? Send us your ideas for bands to profile or up-and-coming musicians to follow. Please fill out this survey form.

-- By Adam Waller

Marie Daulne, founder of the prolific international band Zap Mama, has seen -- even characterized -- the rise of the catchall genre of "world" music from the industry's smallest niche market to an integral part of Top 40 musicians in recent years. Now, in a time where it is almost fashionable to refuse to generically specialize our musical tastes, this attitude of musical universalism that has characterized Daulne's entire career seems to be the end goal for contemporary listeners. Yet this trajectory toward total acceptance has been at the core of Daulne's philosophy since childhood -- a proud "citizen of the world," she is able to "appreciate all styles," as long as the music is "connected with real emotion." Indeed, Zap Mama's discography sounds like a snowball of musical influences, each album incorporating an ever-increasing number of sounds into the band's sonic collage, an idea that is inextricably tied to Daulne's "worldwide mentality."

Daulne's wide cultural embrace began much smaller, however, first taking shape as a young girl's curiosity about her own identity. Born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to a Bantu mother and a Belgian father, Marie and her family had to be airlifted to her father's home country when he was murdered only a week after Marie's birth. And while other multicultural families around her strove for assimilation by way of television and radio, her own mother "kept all her musical traditions -- there was no TV, no radio... she just sang what she grew up with." Meanwhile, a young Daulne was shifting her attention from dreams of athletic fame toward artistic expression: "I started with painting, but it was not physical enough--I had too much energy." Instead, she was attracted to the rich polyphony and vibrancy of her inherited musical tradition, something that has become a sort of hallmark of Zap Mama's style. What she found at home, however, was distinctly absent from her formal education: "In the '70s they were always talking about far away global arts, but they were not talking about African arts."

Thus, the conditions were right for traveling alone to her birthplace where she "discovered something beautiful and powerful." She learned lessons in Africa that she hadn't in Europe: "In the Western world, we lose dignity and grace for tidiness -- this is what I found when I went back to Africa." Where in Europe she saw "too much focus on spending money, consuming food," "[in Africa] they value community, respect, old people -- there's a lot of wisdom." It was a message she felt responsible to share with the rest of the world, and, Marie remembers, "I came back with this idea of five women, only voices." This idea was the birth of Zap Mama.

Two decades later, it is a new generation, and, Daulne notes, MIA has brought world music to the fore, the first to make the sounds of Sri Lanka an accepted part of the mainstream. Zap Mama has adapted to the changing times: "After seven years of exploring voices I decided to put seeds in different earth," namely a myriad of different genres, including collaborations with some of hip hop and R&B's biggest names -- the Roots, Talib Kweli, and Common, for example. Over eight full-length albums, Zap Mama's sound has undergone enormous transformations, something Marie sees as a basic function of humanity, refusing to "stick with one style, especially with my worldwide mentality... I'm a human being and we transform ourselves." The one constant for the constantly evolving group, then, is its mission: "It seems a little hippie, but if you look at the world there's a lot of bad. We need artists to balance the beauty."

Zap Mama's most recent output, ReCreation, was created during Daulne's first trip to Brazil, for which she brought along her six-year-old son, meaning this is his last year of "naivete" before starting at school. Inspired by his perpetual curiosity ("He can enjoy a butterfly passing by"), she realized that "it's a state of being to be curious... I put myself in the same label as him; from there I open myself and have lots of inspiration." This idea became the album's namesake, referencing both recreation as in taking a vacation, as well as the way this type of recreation opens up opportunities for personal recreation. "Once in my life, I felt what it was to be depressed," Marie remembers: "I couldn't see, I couldn't see any beauty," but eventually she found that "when you focus on what you want instead of forcing it you can let things happen to you -- this is what I did for this album."

It is this attitude, along with the world-class music it has spawned, that have afforded Zap Mama the lengthy and successful career they have had, but Marie never allowed herself to get caught up in her growing celebrity: "I knew the direction I wanted to take. People thought I wanted to go for the money, but... I went for the goal of the art, and money came to me because of the success of the art." This way, when the money was no longer there, as, Marie recalls, it sometimes was not, "I never lost myself." It is a recipe for success that many artists could probably stand to embrace, since, as Daulne warns, "there's always a temptation to become famous...If first you are interested in art and the fame attracts you, it's always dangerous." Luckily for us, Zap Mama indeed never took this bait, but has stayed admirably true to the mission Daulne first found in her African home: "When I started it was to prove to the world the African culture is as good as European culture... I realized it was not only African [culture] but the rest of the world."

Tour dates:

8.06.09
BAM Rhythm and Blues Festival , Brooklyn NY

8.07.09
Lollapalooza , Chicago

8.14.09
Mondavi Center For The Performing Arts / UC Davis Quad , UC Davis

8.15.09
Grand Performances , Los Angeles

8.28.09
Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival , San Francisco

Read other Global Music Corner stories.

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Kenneth C. Davis: Memorial Day: A History

2009-05-19T14:30:37Z

Mother's Day has just passed. Memorial Day is around the corner. At least on the surface, the two occasions would seem to have little in common besides falling in May. But there is an intriguing connection between the two that comes through American history's bloodiest chapter, the Civil War.

Memorial Day was born in 1868, in the Civil War's wake, as Decoration Day. It was a day set aside to honor fallen soldiers by "decorating" their graves with fresh flowers -- an occasion originally fixed on May 30, when the most flowers are in bloom. For years, it was a profoundly solemn occasion that kept alive the passions of the war that had killed more than 600,000 Americans -- an astonishing tally that equaled some two percent of the population at the time (a comparable loss today would mean 6 million dead). In 1882, it was renamed Memorial Day.

A few years after that first Memorial Day, Julia Ward Howe, a prominent abolitionist best known for writing The Battle Hymn of the Republic, first promoted the idea of a "Mother's Day." But her ambitious concept called for more than a simple celebration of "Mom and apple pie." Reacting to the carnage of the Civil War and Europe's Franco-Prussian War, she later noted in her memoirs:

The question forced itself upon me, 'Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters, to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone bear and know the cost?'

In 1870, Howe issued a "Mothers' Day Proclamation" that read, in part:

Our husbands shall not come to us reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience...

From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says, "Disarm, Disarm!

The sword of murder is not the balance of justice! Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession.

Howe's international call for mothers to become the voice of pacifism found few takers. Even among like-minded women, there was greater urgency over the suffrage question. Her passionate campaign for a "Mother's Day for Peace" fell by the wayside. (Mother's Day, as we know it, is not the invention of Hallmark; it started in 1912 through the efforts of
Philadelphian Anna Jarvis.)

Today, sadly, both Mother's Day and Memorial Day are largely commercial bonanzas. Mother's Day is a big one for flowers, chocolates and greeting cards. Memorial Day -- a movable feast that was changed by Congress to the last Monday in May in 1968 -- has morphed into the summer's long weekend kickoff, with ever more emphasis on picnic pointers and swimsuit sales.

Last week, I heard the first mention of this solemn occasion in a radio ad for a "Memorial Holiday Mattress Sale!" Perhaps not so coincidentally, I was driving through Dover, Delaware, at the time. Earlier that day I had seen a newspaper photograph of the flag-draped casket of an American soldier killed in Baghdad. The sight of our war dead being lovingly and respectfully carried through Dover Air Force Base had been denied to America for eighteen years -- an unfortunate Pentagon decision that attempted to mask and sanitize the grievous losses suffered since the first Gulf War, right through Afghanistan and Iraq.

But the solemn, sad image of that casket in the morning paper brought Memorial Day and its meaning starkly home for me.

War. Supreme Sacrifice. Loss.

The flag-draped coffin means another mother's child gone, another of Julia Ward Howe's "sons taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience."

Is it possible to truly honor Memorial Day and what Lincoln called "the last full measure of devotion" and still work towards Howe's original -- and perhaps utopian -- vision of Mother's Day?

If only we remember the history behind the holiday and what it's really all about.

See more at my blog at dontknowmuch.com and follow me on twitter@kennethcdavis

Molly Magid Hoagland: Fly Where I Can't Hold You

2009-05-12T21:01:24Z

The other day I sat facing my younger son across a café table, lemonades in hand. He brushed hair from his earnest blue eyes and asked one of his poetic/scientific/vehicular questions. (Why did the wind stop blowing? Why are yolks yellow? Why don't motorcycles have windshield wipers? Why can't dogs drive cars?) Watching and listening, I half wondered, Who is this sweet pixie, anyway? Whereas I lived and breathed my first boy's early years, with my second I've been devoted but rarely transfixed. Too often he's been riding in a sidecar along a route mapped by his older brother's ins and outs, and I haven't been watching as intently as he comes into himself.

For him, however, I'm the one and only. Reunited after time apart, his questions come tumbling out, stored up for me, his confidante. For months he's been puzzling over the ways and worries of nursery school. "I don't know which is my chair," he'd say; "I'm too shy to talk." He observes it all, then asks me later. Why do some kids push him out of the jungle gym while others protect him? Why did one girl cry when another wouldn't hold her hand? Why did someone call him the Bad Guy?

At first I wished he could take on the rough-and-tumble by himself; the boys who already wield light sabers, the girls who already jockey for friendships. His self-sufficiency would have complemented my urge to take a discreet step away from my now-older children and back toward myself. But instead I'm needed, in a more fine-tuned way than for his baby years. (If only it were some kind of achievement, to be needed so fervently). There are meetings held, ideas exchanged about how to help him. At home, the supposedly shy boy is a tyrannical cherub, nervously aware that he is outgrowing his clinginess. Once after a rage I said soothingly, "It's okay--I love you," but he raged again: "I don't WANT you to love me!" He muffles my voice with his small hand when I put pedantic words--"you're frustrated"--to a bad feeling that's engulfed him.

The imbalance of young childhood must be infuriating. They are so engaged and single-minded, so wholly entwined with us grownups, while we are distracted by our separate lives in the wide world. I found with my older son that the fleshy, doting connection of youngest childhood evolves into the life-long complexity of growing away, returning, growing away. I remember skittishly taking refuge in my own amused mother's lap the night before I moved far from home for my first real job.

My boy's over-attachment concerns me sometimes but as we sit across the table, his curiosity, his tender confidences and conversation are reassuring. And lately his questions and worries about school are giving way to modest tales of moxie, of going head-first down the slide and of speaking up (Hey--that's mine! or I'm NOT the Bad Guy!). In a playground now strewn with spent cherry blossoms I watch from a bench as he and two small boys zip off on scooters through a half-chained gate into the vacant expanse of a Brooklyn basketball court. His little corduroyed backside clambers over another fence after them. What urban detritus lurks there? Broken glass? Scraggly rat-filled bushes? I hardly care--I love the Huck Finn mischief he wants to chase, barely looking back. I wait for news of the adventure, knowing that someday soon he won't be saving all his confidences just for me.

"Fly where I can't hold you" comes from the song "Follow," here sung by Richie Havens

Rachel Farris: Mother's Day Reminds Me of the Pill

2009-05-11T23:32:37Z

On Mother's Day, I participated in my usual Sunday morning ritual: reading the headlines on my Blackberry, checking my @replies on Twitter and scrolling through my friends' Facebook status updates. Among the chatter of "Happy Mother's Day" and dreary "Headed to the in-laws..." was another update -- words from one of my female friends, a musician in a committed two-year relationship. Her status was a "shout out for those of us that have successfully not become mommies."

Her status did more than update me as to "what's on her mind" -- it reminded me of what has been on mine. Not becoming pregnant is, for most non-religious, non-family-building women, a regular source of anxiety. I discuss birth control with just about every female I know. The cost of it, the difficulty getting away from work to get a prescription for it, procedures and pills that aren't covered by health insurance, on and on. These are smart, gainfully employed women who are actively trying not to get pregnant. What becomes of the woman who doesn't have the time or the finances to obsess over these ovarian strategies? Wait, wait, don't tell me -- I know how this ends. She gets pregnant.

In the storied reclamation of our gender, women forgot to claim one thing: our right to control our reproductive systems. While the fight is by no means over, it does seem like the contractions subsided with the invention of sports bras and shoulder pads. What happened to the big push?

When it comes to obtaining oral contraceptives, I get especially infuriated. We're not talking about abortions here -- what's wrong with prevention? The two most effective forms of birth control, after the mythical abstinence, are IUDs and other hormonal options, like The Pill. Why The Pill is not available over the counter is something that no one has been able to successfully answer for me. Certain forms of The Pill which don't include estrogen, called progesterone-only pills, are less likely to cause blood-clots and are often prescribed to women who cannot take higher-doses of hormones. A study done in 2007 by the Contraception Journal showed that a sample of random women could screen themselves for oral contraceptive contraindications nearly as well as medical professionals. Only 6.7% of the women incorrectly thought they did not have any contraindications/risks when, in fact, they did. Even with medical screening under normal circumstances, approximately 6% of oral contraceptive users in the US show contraindications for pill use. The study ultimately concluded that since the percentage of women who incorrectly misdiagnosed themselves is similar to the proportion of actual pill users in the US who are contraindicated for use, the over the counter sale of birth control pills would likely be safe.

Conservatives should get behind the numbers if nothing else. A study done in 2001 by the Institute For Women's Policy Research showed that making birth control pills available over-the-counter (OTC) would dramatically increase its usage, which could result in potentially $2.08 billion dollars in medical savings from preventing unplanned pregnancies. The same study estimates that the number of abortions would be reduced by 220,000 a year. How's that for Choose Life?

Yet after all of these comprehensive studies, women still take time off of work, go to their doctors, wear see-through gowns, patiently explain they're still with the same partner, remind the nurses they have been tested for STD's, stare at plastic models of fallopian tubes, pay co-pays and wait for our golden tickets.

Those little white hormones packed in foil and plastic aren't the controlled substance here: women are. And if anyone wants to tell you differently, ask them why you can buy condoms and cigarettes in a 7-Eleven. It's our issue. They don't get to make it a partisan issue or an abstinence-only issue. We need to take out our reality TV epidurals and get back to our bra-burning roots. We're not yet mothers, but we could at least do something for the next generation we might one day decide to have.

Robert Thurman: Now Is The Time for All Good Women to Come to the Aid of the Planet!

2009-05-11T14:03:51Z

(And all good men to stand up with them!)

I am excited to begin my HuffPost blogging in the wake of Mother's Day, and a few days after hosting H. H. the Dalai Lama in New York. His Holiness, in radiant health and spirits, powerfully manifested his unwavering message of "world peace through inner peace." To all of us enrapt as ever, he taught us the quintessence of compassion. The next day he attended a packed benefit luncheon for Tibet House, US at the famous "power lunch" restaurant, The Four Seasons. (Alex von Bidder welcomed the guests to what he called "the ultimate power lunch," which I annotated by reminding everyone that the ultimate "power" is that of compassion.) His Holiness spoke from the heart and eloquently appealed to the hearts of all present to save the extremely precious and highly endangered Buddhist culture of beloved Tibet. We all left fully aglow, and inspired to do something for Tibet and for the world.

In these times, the doubt often arises as to whether the world is going to make it - at least the stressed out human beings. While there are so many wise and kind and beautiful people everywhere, it seems as if most of the leaders in actual power are charging ahead in flamboyantly self-destructive paths. Exceptional, of course, is the wonderful Barack Obama and perhaps the glorious Angela Merkel. And interestingly, both seem to like the Dalai Lama! Hmmmm. There must be some others at the top of the various heaps of humanity we call nations, but definitely not enough to really turn the Spaceship Earth onto the radically new course it needs to pass the unthinkable crisis we are facing.

Spaceship Earth is overheating, its seas are rising. It is overpopulated; its resources are dwindling. Its earth and water and air is poisoned. Its wild animals are perishing at an alarming rate, and its domesticated animals are being tormented and turned into toxic foodstuffs. And the humans, who are causing all this, are mainly in denial about their own responsibility, blaming various enemies instead, and so the majority of their machinery, money, and ingenuity is wasted in warfare and preparation for more, and for local, domestic, and internal violence.

So naturally we fear the end is nigh. People ask me all the time, "Can we make it? Do you think it's possible?" I feel the same way emotionally, but intellectually I am certain we will make it and the human drama on this planet will continue for many millennia, getting better and better.

Why? Because of Mother's Day, because the real Day of the Mothers is coming. Listen to Julia Ward Howe, a Mother who was a staunch activist against slavery and a pioneer of feminism. She came up with the vision of the international Mother's Day, and wrote the original Mother's Day Proclamation in 1870. Just listen!

"Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
"From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace."

(Thanks to Jonathan Klate for sending this text of the proclamation.)

Now where is this great "general congress of women?" It is to be "without limit of nationality," that is to say: global. Such a congress of women must arise and demand an end to war, an end to men's stubborn "staying the course" in inane campaigns of violence. Julia Ward Howe already outlined their mission, 139 years ago. How bad does it have to get for them to stand up and accomplish it?

Twelve years ago, the Dalai Lama was at a Tibet House US "Peacemaking" conference in San Francisco, and was encouraging the 1500 or so "youth at risk" present that we needed them to turn the world around, their energy was crucial. The youth were inspired and the thousands in the audience felt a wave of hope ripple through. At that moment, the notable author and psychotherapist, Jean Shinoda Bolen piped up from the panel on stage, "Your Holiness, there is another crucial source of energy we may also find of great assistance." "What might that be?" was the response. The smiling answer, "Menopausal zest!" brought the house thunderously down, and His Holiness was enormously impressed. Well, then, Mothers of the World, it is high time!

When the students and workers at Tiananmen Square held off the communist party bosses for months in 1989, it was because the troops sent in refused to run over the grandmothers out in the square protecting their grandchildren. When Yeltsin had to withdraw in the first Chechen war, it was because the grandmothers en masse went down to the front and took their grandsons out of the line. The grandmother house of the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy held veto power over the decisions of the chiefs of the tribes. When the Mother's really recognize that they better leave what's "left of home," their power is undeniable. It is daunting. It is dangerous. But there must come a point where it is more dangerous not to arise and demand peace, demanding it peacefully. May the day soon be upon us! May all men stand together with the Mothers! Now is the time for all women to come to the aid of the planet!

Robert Thurman is the author of Inner Revolution, Infinite Life, Jewel Tree of Tibet, and Why the Dalai Lama Matters.

Nicki Richesin: How to Accept the Ones We Love the Most -- Our Mothers

2009-05-11T11:03:01Z

This Mother's Day, my new anthology Because I Love Her: 34 Women Writers Reflect on the Mother-Daughter Bond, has made me reflect on what I've learned from the mothers in my life over the years. My mom taught me to love words and the wonder of them. While reading to me as a child, she cackled like a cruel witch or bellowed like a giant, performing for my amusement until she would often grow hoarse. Mom taught me how to listen carefully to others as though I were their shrink, to put clothing together to create "outfits" and to work extremely hard to realize my dreams. From my paternal grandmother, I learned how to flirt with anyone, make the world's best deviled eggs, and face my fears. "Nana," my maternal grandmother, taught me how to laugh at myself, proudly sing off-key and eat honeysuckle blossoms fresh from the vine. They're remarkable women whom I'm so grateful to have in my life even though I now live too far away from them.

I was raised by a mother who some might call "perfect," but I realize now what an impossible burden this places on a mother. These unrealistic expectations can be very damaging as such perfection is neither normal nor sustainable. Instead of nurturing the mother-daughter relationship, they drive a wedge in the bond. A few of the contributors in Because I Love Her did not have such loving examples in their lives. They were daughters of women struggling with mental illness, addictions and suffering with depression from being women in an era when their role did not encompass much more than motherhood. I've been inspired by their compassion and brutally honest accounts of mothers and daughters. These are personal essays of tremendous courage from talented writers who have faced their demons, forgiven for past wrongs and become stronger for it. Although it wasn't easy, and too often quite painful, the contributors bravely expose their lives by sharing their own stories in this collection.

Tara Bray Smith beautifully wrote in her memoir West of Then of her relentless pursuit to come to know her mother despite her heroin-addiction. Her tragic account was so emotionally searing, I asked her to contribute an essay about her relationship with her doomed mother. Tara essentially became a mother to her mom, searching for her among other junkies in the middle of the night, praying she was safe, not strung out again. She learned that opiate addiction satisfies the need for mother love. Although she's still angry with her mother for neglecting her, she had to finally accept her mother does not want her help. As she astutely observes, "we're all deficient as adults and no one is accountable for that but ourselves."

For Amanda Coyne, who has written passionately of her mother for Harper's, she had to contend with twelve years of her mother's imprisonment for drug trafficking. Amanda explains her role in the family as devoted daughter when her sisters gave up on her mother long ago. Despite the long years of disappointment, Amanda never quits her mother. She breaks our hearts with her final admission that her mother drove her away as a teenager to maintain her relationship with her then-boyfriend.

Jacquelyn Mitchard creates a "Mother Load" for her two adopted daughters so that they will never feel the loss she experienced as young woman when her mother died. At 19, Jackie felt abandoned by the death of her mother with very few memories left of her. For her, it was crucial that she provide her daughters "a very real map for being mothers, but more importantly, the best legacy I could leave them: a solid and indelible sense of having been mothered."

The writer in the collection whom I feel holds the most promise is Anne Marie Feld. She has written in Modern Love and Mommy Wars about discovering her mother hanging from the end of a rope on her sixteenth birthday. She vividly remembers living with someone descending into madness and consequently she seems absent from Anne's fond childhood memories. Her mother, like so many others, struggled to be perfect, to make her daughters always look presentable and worked too hard, all the time losing sight of what was most important- being connected to her family.

Not all of the pieces in this anthology are serious or haunting. In fact, many are quite funny. Susan Wiggs writes of her joy in young motherhood when she was then hungrily working to establish a writing career to stay at home with her daughter. She went on to write some 30 bestselling novels and has proven a very successful role model for her daughter. In "Things to Remember Not to Forget," Katherine Center tells of "how we have to give up the old to get the new. You can't be the child and the mom at the same time." Just as Thomas Wolfe once observed, "You can't go home again." She expresses with great tenderness this need we have to surrender to the nostalgia of our youth and how "we all carry our mothers inside of us."

Because I Love Her is a tribute to how difficult it can often be to accept the ones we love the most. The thread that runs throughout the collection is this idea that despite our mothers' best efforts- whatever they had to deal with -- we remain hopeful for them, for ourselves and for our daughters. Our mothers shaped who we are and some of us endured heartbreak, but we survived nonetheless. We all love our mothers, no matter what pressures they faced, we can forgive them and honor them on this day.

I am not a perfect mother. I'm disorganized, too often lose my patience and yell, and have trouble being present with my daughter. Although I'm prone to guilt, these writers have shown me how to forgive myself. As mothers and daughters, we disappoint each other all the time, and yet we cheer each other on, supporting each other through life's trials. And no one out there wants more for us than our mothers. I guess this is what I want to remember this Mother's Day: my five-year-old daughter's joyful face -- hazel eyes glowing, sloppy hair hanging in her sweet little face and her magical laugh tinkling in the air. I want to preserve just this moment. Not perfectly for time eternal. Just for now. I want to forgive myself my many imperfections and celebrate the moment. Right here. Right now.

Nicki Richesin is the editor of the recently published anthology Because I Love Her: 34 Women Writers Reflect on the Mother-Daughter Bond. See the book trailer or become a facebook fan.

Ian Welsh: On Mothers Day: Caging a Nightingale

2009-05-10T23:59:05Z

It being mother's day, and the entire world conspiring to tell me about it, over and over again, I've been thinking a bit about my mum. She died 3 years ago of cancer. I spent her last two weeks by her bed, and she died the night I told her that everyone had come and that it was ok for her to die. By that point she couldn't speak, and while she didn't seem to be in much pain, she certainly wasn't enjoying what was left of her life.

She had lived her life for other people--for me, and for her husband. I don't know any of her close friends who didn't think she should have gotten a divorce when I was a young kid, but she didn't. At that time I'm pretty sure it was because she was threatened with losing me.

But really, the woman she was when I was young died when I was 13. I remember it well. My father had gotten a job with the UN, in Bangladesh. My mother didn't want to go. As far as my father was concerned, where the husband went the wife went.

In Canada she had a job, as the secretary to the woman who ran the Coquitlam library system. It was the most senior secretarial position in the organization and quite responsible. In her early forties, she looked ten years younger, fit and slim, with dark black hair. She walked everywhere, regularly walking 30 or 40 blocks a day, and while I think it's safe to say she wasn't happy, she had a life with some happiness in it.

She went with my father to Bangladesh. I went to boarding school in Vancouver. 4 months later I visited my parents, for Christmas, in Bangladesh. She had no job, no life outside the house. She had loved children, and they loved her, but now she had no child to look after, neither me nor our cousins. Her life was completely her husband's. My mother had put on 40 pounds, her hair was half gray and her eyes were dull.

She had been broken. The woman she was had died. Like a man who cages a nightingale in his fist, by not letting it have any freedom, my father had killed what he loved. I don't know if he ever even realized it, or if he did, if he cared, or if the pleasure of imposing his will made up for it.

The women in my family usually make it to their late 80s and my father was 10 years older than my mother and not in good health. So I always assumed she'd have a good 20 years free. She didn't.

But she died free.

About 3 weeks before she died, when she knew she had cancer but assumed she had 8 months to a year left, we talked. She told me that she had decided to move out, and that she would never live with him again. I was never so happy for her.

A few days later she collapsed, and never walked again. Then she died.

But she died free.

My wish to you and for myself, this mother's day then, is this.

Don't die free.

Live free.

Paul Abrams: To Moms the World Over: How to Keep Your Cut Roses Healthy for 10+ Days

2009-05-10T23:32:51Z

On the theory that "a financial crisis is a terrible thing to waste," let me offer a tried and true means of making that gift last beyond the few days that it usually takes your roses to wilt and die, thus providing more joy for the same investment.

At night before you turn off the lights, put a stopper in your kitchen sink and add a few inches of water. Take your roses from their vase, and lay them on their sides. The next morning, you can put them back in their vases.

That's it. Even when you see your roses begin to droop in the evenings, the next morning they will awaken reinvigorated.

It works.

Happy Mothers' Day to all, and may your roses now remind you of the feelings behind the gifts for ten days or more.

One must give credit where credit is due: I learned this from my ex-wife who, while a transplanted Swede, was trained in the ways of the border area between England and Scotland where she grew up. The Scots always treat money as if they were in a financial crisis!

Read more: Mothers' Day, Cut Roses, Flowers, Roses, Style News

Maria Cuomo Cole: A Mother's Day Message that Touched my Heart

2009-05-10T19:21:18Z

A special friend who works with me at HELP USA wrote this inspiring message for Mother's Day. It touched my heart and I would like to share it.

A Mother's Wish

Many of the Mother's Day Cards mailed this year will be posted, "return to sender" this year, due to the thousands of mothers and children who have lost their homes and are living in homeless shelters. In my current job as a social worker, I witness the hopelessness of women, who are homeless, many of whom are mothers, who have lost control of their home security and in many cases - their children's. I recognize their pain and frustration because I, myself, was once in the same place.

Twenty years ago, I needed support through a devastating time when I had lost control of almost every aspect of my life. I was forced to enter the emergency NYC homeless system with my daughter, son and mother due to a chain of devastating events including a home fire and substance abuse addiction. It was the lowest point in my life. I did not know if I would be able to take care of my kids.

Fortunately, I was referred to HELP USA, a homeless nonprofit organization, and moved into a beautiful new apartment with a park and a playground. My children were enrolled in on-site day care and I was able to work with professional staff on regaining sobriety and self-sufficiency in order to care for my children. I worked hard to become a positive role model and continue my education, earning an MSW from Fordham University.

Today, my daughter is a college student looking for summer employment. (Anyone hiring?)
I feel blessed to now be working to help women who are suffering through the desperate experience of losing their homes, an employee of HElP USA, the organization that helped me rebuild my life as an individual and as a mother.

On this Mother's Day, I say a word of thanks for the public and private investment in programs that support women and children who slip through the safety net. I am living proof that good programs can help people turn their lives around.

I thank all the women who are being helped and for all those helping others.

And I give personal thanks to an organization that truly lives up to its name, HELP USA.

-- Josephine Mitchell, Mother and Social Worker

Deborah Jiang Stein: A Tribute to Mothers

2009-05-10T19:00:18Z

And How I Got So 'Happy'

Since when did 'happiness' become a life goal, an emotional destiny to achieve?

All of a sudden, everything 'happiness' scatters the blog and book landscape - happiness indexes, happiness economics, happiness projects and programs, happiness research, collections of 'happy' quotes. Happy, happy, happy.

I'm suspicious. Is happiness the carrot in front of the horse? I question the premise of the Happy Movement, the premise, "If I do this ___________, then I'll be happy."

What is there to achieve in 'happiness' if we are at peace, contented, and fulfilled? Isn't life enhanced when we feel contented and fulfilled, backed by a positive attitude and positive outlook on life?

I'm told that people think of me as resilient and positive, and I'm often asked how I acquired and remain so contented. I never thought about it much until I started receiving requests to speak on the topics of resilience and the power of positive attitude.

Since I don't believe much in absolute truths, all I know is what works for me. Though people ask me how I'm so happy, I never pay much attention to happiness. I do pay a lot of attention to feeling contented and fulfilled. Enriched, satisfied, positive, and resilient. It's this path that gets me to the 'happy' that I'm asked about.

From where I come from, with all the pieces that make me who I am, my survival (beyond just staying alive!) depended on my outlook on life.

One example: I can look at my birth in prison and all the circumstances that got me there and which then followed me, along with multiple mother separations, as irreconcilable and damaging wounds. Each could be a gash that won't heal. One after the other. Or I can appreciate my enigma, these unique and rare roots, as a chance to reach out and turn what was adverse, with all the set backs, into a positive tool for change.

I'm a fan of adventure, a thrill-seeker with an insatiable curiosity and appetite for learning. Along the way I recognized I was served a full plate, and it's only right to share when we have abundance.

Once called a special needs child and at-risk girl, I had too much on my plate. Rather than an abundance of negative, I began to wonder how I could use what landed in my lap as a way to give to others. How and what I do to give is another article.

But I believe in using my highly creative energy to innovate, build, and create, in many forms. Whether it's writing, marketing, speaking, inventing, or program and business development, the roots are the same: creative adventure and abundance to share with others, all as a positive tool for change.

If I had sought happiness throughout my rocky road, I'd never have bounced up with the resilience that is now ingrained in me as a worldview. I'm contented, no matter the circumstances around me, and yes, happy. But 'happy' is not my goal. It's simple to feel happy when we're contented.

I'm lucky to hold my station of contentment and joie de vivre. Some of it may have to do with being multiracial. According to a recent study, multiracial people are generally happier than most.

My curiosity about the 'happy' movement led me to learn there's even research about happiness. (Can't a person just live, without a social and academic movement with books and research to justify the experience?) It seems like the happy gurus and happiness movement guide draws followers to seek a felt experience associated with pleasure.

I'm all for pleasure and fun. In fact, I'm probably one of the more playful pleasure-filled people you'll meet. And I don't even drink or drug to get there! I get there by way of my positive attitude and outlook, feeling at ease with myself, contented and fulfilled.

What does any of this have to with honoring mothers in this May, the month of Mother's Day? Everything. Mothers are our source. I've had several mothers, the early ones just briefly, then my Mother, the one who stood by me no matter what.

At one time I viewed the influences of so many mothers as a conflict within me. Now they all walk beside me. From each I've learned to seek and live:

• Enriched
• Satisfied
• Positive
• Resilient

My Mother is the source of my on-going ability to feel enriched, satisfied, positive, and resilient. She is one of the reasons I can pass this on to my children, and to others around me.

Now that I look around, happiness is quite simple. In a forthcoming post, I'll list my simple tools for contented and enriched living.

For a start, I just put one foot in front of the other and make sure to do what fulfills, what is gratifying, and what contributes to others.

What gives you contentment and fulfillment?

* * *

This is another Musing for Mutts Like Me.

Find me here:
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Email: deborah.kjs [at] gmail [dot] com

What do you think? Post your comment below.

Chantal Sicile-Kira: Where Would We Be Without Our Mothers?

2009-05-10T17:00:17Z

When my parents moved to America from France in the early 1950's, maman was eight months pregnant. She left behind her large, boisterous and close-knit family in France and followed papa because he wanted to start a new life in the New World. In those days, French people didn't just pick up and leave and cross the ocean, especially not with a baby on the way. But Maman followed her heart. Maman raised six children in a country where she had no relatives, and at first no friends to help her, and where she didn't speak the language or know the customs. But she learned them.

Maman must have deeply loved papa to leave all that was familiar behind, and papa was no ordinary man. Take camping. Camping for my dad meant spending the three summer months in a cow field in Kentucky, sleeping in tiny pup tents, using a stinky wooden outhouse, and cooking over a campfire. We cleaned ourselves by bathing in the river below, and my mom had to trek into town to a Laundromat while papa went to work during the day. Some of us tykes were still in diapers, and it wasn't easy taking care of us with no running water (other than the river below). At night, papa would take us frogging in an old rowboat on the river, and we would eat froglegs for breakfast cooked over the open campfire. It wasn't till I moved to France as a young adult that I realized that the French did in fact eat frog legs, but not for breakfast, and usually not cooked over an open fire.

My family moved often, about every three years because that was how long it usually took for papa's construction projects to be completed, and then it was on to the next one. Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Rosebank on Staten Island, Portsmouth, Stapleton Heights on Staen Island, Altadena in California, and so on - maman took it all in stride. Think of all the moving and organizing that meant maman had to do; the number of boxes to pack and unpack, all the stuff six children and a few pets can accumulate. The new school enrollments, finding new doctors and dentists, and acclimating to a new small town or a new big city, trying to find babysitters and make friends. My mother's French accent was so think, that everywhere we moved people thought maman had just moved from France, and would comment, "So, you're from France; how do you like America?" Once maman had obtained her American citizenship, she would respond "I am an American, what do you think?! I have six children they are all born here!"

When people see what life with my son, Jeremy, entails in terms of energy, and organization, advocating, resource-finding, they often ask, "How do you do it? How do you handle raising a child so impacted by autism, besides having Rebecca?" I think of maman, raising the six of us (ok, none of us have autism but we had our share of neurodiversity in the family) in different cities every three years, and I realize where my resourcefulness came from. "I had a great role model," I reply.

Happy Mother's Day, Maman!

David M. Abromowitz: A Mother's Day for a Mom Who Never Liked Mother's Day

2009-05-10T15:39:10Z

My mother never particularly liked Mother's Day. The sentiment always struck her as unctuous, akin to the scriptural passages frequently read at women's funerals: "A woman of valor who can find? For her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, and he hath no lack of gain. She doeth him good and not evil all the days of her life." Mom made us swear no one would read it at her funeral.

Not that she ever would have identified herself as unhappy with motherhood or honoring mothers. Born in 1919 and predisposed to voting Republican, she was uncomfortable with early feminism of the 1960s.

But had she known of Julia Ward Howe's early effort at establishing a Mother's Day through her 1870 "Appeal to Womanhood Throughout the World", my Nixon-supporting-turned-Another-Mother-For-Peace mother would have signed up. These words of Howe's would have been right up her alley: "Arise, all women who have hearts whether your baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country, to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

A child of the Depression, Mom must have thought the 1934 sentiments of Franklin Roosevelt's Mother's Day Proclamation made sense as well: "Whereas [Congress has declared that] there are throughout our land today an unprecedentedly large number of mothers and dependent children who, because of unemployment or loss of their bread-earners, are lacking many of the necessities of life," President Roosevelt called on Americans to show love and reverence for motherhood by "doing all that we can through our churches, fraternal and welfare agencies for the relief and welfare of mothers and children who may be in need of the necessities of life."

Since my mother passed away in the early 1990's, there is no way to know what she would make of Barack Obama. But this year's presidential Mother's Day proclamation would have resonated with a woman who co-owned a department store, helped build a synagogue, organized newspaper recycling drives before there was Earth Day, and yet was still expected to deal with all things related to children and food in the household.

"Women often work long hours at demanding jobs and then return home to a household with myriad demands," proclaimed President Obama. "Balancing work and family is no easy task, but mothers across our Nation meet this challenge each day, often without recognition for their hard work and dedication. The strength and conviction of all mothers--including those who work inside and outside the home--are inspiring. They deserve our deepest respect, admiration, and appreciation."

I wish my mother had lived to hear this sort of unsentimental but real respect and acknowledgment of what she (and millions of women for decades) endured and accomplished as a mother, and what so many other mothers accomplish every day. That's a Mother's Day that Mom would have liked.

David Abromowitz is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. On Mother's Day his thoughts turn to Rosalind Samotin Abromowitz, 1919-1992.

Rachael Freed: The Most Important Letters We Will Ever Write: Memory and Meaning - Mother's Day

2009-05-10T15:09:55Z

Transforming the Ancient Ethical Will into Contemporary Legacy Letters

Let's start at the beginning. What is an ethical will? It's a non-legal document written to communicate values and wisdom, history, stories, and love from one generation to another. Where did it come from? From the Judeo-Christian tradition, the book of Genesis, when a dying Jacob gathered his sons in Egypt to offer them his blessing and to request that they bury him in Canaan with his ancestors. Early rabbis urged men to instruct their sons about the tradition's ethical teachings. They were transmitted as written letters.

So that's the history lesson. But a question far more compelling is, "What has ignited such a powerful and growing interest in writing 'legacy letters' in contemporary life?"

Before I make generalizations, and I intend to, here's my personal answer: I was introduced to the ethical will at a women's gathering. Entranced, I raced home to write to my adult son and daughter. Ignoring the historical patriarchal tradition, I encouraged myself with, "Well, I too -- mother and ancient hippie feminist -- have wisdom, values and love to express to my children and grandchildren." My fingers flew over the keyboard. What I wrote that day is the most important message I have ever written.

"Well, I too -- mother and ancient hippie feminist -- have wisdom, values and love to express to my children and grandchildren."

When I finished, I experienced a deep sense of well-being. I'd told my children about our family history and values. I'd expressed my love for and pride in them. I'd blessed them with the hard-earned wisdom of my life experience and the lessons I'd learned. I'd shared my love of life and my dreams and hopes for them. I'd asked their forgiveness for the wounds they bear from my imperfect parenting. I'd explained my rationale about my philanthropic and personal financial choices in my will. I'd shared stories about the meaningful "stuff" I wanted them and their children to have and pass down. True to the tradition going back to Jacob, I'd spelled out details clarifying and personalizing my advance directive. I asked my children to care for me if necessary as I neared death, and explained what dying with dignity meant to me. I told them the ways I wanted to be remembered. When I finished I was relieved, at peace, unafraid, and experienced gratitude for the blessings of my life.

What had I tapped into? Universal needs dovetailing with my own to communicate for the future! I discovered that people are transformed by participating in a simple introductory experience of legacy: writing one blessing to a loved one.

Here are my observations after a dozen years and two books of experience. Legacy writing connects us to our history and future generations, clarifies our values, and communicates a legacy to those we love. As significant, it also taps into deep universal needs that we don't even realize we have.

Legacy writing helps us clarify our identity and our life purpose. Beyond this, six additional needs are addressed as we write our legacy letters. They include our need to:

* belong,
* be known,
* be remembered,
* have our lives make a difference,
* bless and be blessed,
* celebrate Life.

Realizing that life is fragile, that we do not control the number of our days, we feel the urgent need to document our legacies to help shape this unfolding new world. Many seniors feel a special responsibility to transmit and preserve stories, learning and love. As we fulfill these individual responsibilities, we find our place as contributors, strengthening the fabric of our families, communities and culture.

As a culture we are swept away by the seductions of our secular world, with its promises of instant and easy satisfaction. We come away hollow, yearning for fulfillment, intimacy, meaningful connections, and a sense of purpose beyond our selves. Preserving memories is one way to enliven and make sacred our link to the generations before us. We must name, recall, reclaim, and appreciate the legacies passed down to us that we in turn must pass down to the next generations.

The function of the elders as the Keepers of the Memory of the tribe

is essential to the survival of the whole society.

Without memories a race has no future.

- Denise Linn in Sacred Legacies

Because it may be difficult to know where to begin, and the myriad of potential letters can be daunting or confusing, here is a step-by-step guide to help you get started. Both the calendar and our relationships are instrumental in shaping who we are. Relationships with our mothers, whether they're alive or not, are often complicated. But Mothers Day is just around the corner. Because I trust the process of legacy writing, and have witnessed examples of the healing of difficult relationships through the process, I suggest we begin here:

1. Bring your cup of tea or mug of coffee and your favorite pen and paper to your most quiet and peaceful place to sit. Set your timer for 15 minutes, no more.

2. The first step is to choose a mother to focus on: it may be your mother or a surrogate mother, a mother neither your biological nor adopted mother. Choose a woman who has nurtured, supported, encouraged, even nagged at you with love, and who expected of you your best. The mother you choose to honor today may no longer be here in physical form -- that's okay too.

(An example: when a young woman shared her amend legacy letter to her mother with me in a legacy workshop, I observed that she seemed troubled. She said she'd shared it with me because she thought she'd made a mistake. "Why?" I asked, "There's no wrong way to do it." She explained that her mother had passed away. I assured her that relationships don't end with death, and that healing is possible no matter the circumstances. She looked relieved, her peace of mind palpable, as she confided that she never could've written the letter while her mother was alive.)

3. Write the name of the mother you chose and today's date at the top of your paper.

4. Take a few minutes to reflect, to remember, and jot notes about things you're grateful to her for...what you appreciate about her...what you want to celebrate about her. Maybe she was there for you when you skinned your knee or your heart; maybe she taught you a skill or a perspective that's been invaluable to you throughout your life; maybe she worked long and hard on your behalf in times more difficult than ours; maybe she was an immigrant or a pioneer who dealt with a new language, a new world and way of life; maybe she made sacrifices in her own life for the betterment of yours; maybe you appreciate her for giving you life.

5. Now take no more than five minutes to write her a mother's day blessing, a blessing that honors her and expresses your appreciation of her.

6. Put your blessing away overnight. Tomorrow, read it aloud to yourself; make any revisions that seem right to you. Then copy it in your own hand on a simple card to read to and give your mother on Mother's Day.

May you and your loved ones be nourished this Mothers Day, and may all your legacies be blessings, Rachael Freed

For more about legacies, visit www.Life-Legacies.com

Visit www.life-legacies.com/tips/ to subscribe to Legacy Tips&Tools, a free monthly e-letter.

Susanna Speier: Politiku for Mother's Day

2009-05-10T14:52:28Z

Mothers Day wouldn't have existed if it wasn't for Anna M. Jarvis' tireless solicitations to legislators and businessmen. In 1914, when her efforts finally paid off, the holiday dedicated to honoring mothers was officiated as a national holiday by President Woodrow Wilson. It is now observed on the second Sunday of May in countries all around the world.

Thought rarely associated with Anna M. Jarvis, it is not difficult to associate this holiday with tireless advocacy. A mother on a mission is a force to be reckoned with.

The impact that our mothers' political thoughts, feelings, ideas, knowledge, ideals, choices, opportunities, experiences and activities have on us is difficult to grasp. What is clear, however, is that our mothers' politics influence our political identity. In honor of our moms; Matt, Don, Aaron , Phil, Irene, Martha and I present: Politiku for Mother's Day

Martha Danly's Politku

One true Democrat.
Marries a Republican.
Brings him to her side.

Don Goede's Politiku

happy mom's day mom
and yes, we are still at war
the living say, "hi."

Aaron Landsman's Politiku

Mom? What do you mean
The Weather Underground may
Have stayed at our house?

In the Midwest, where
Activism's more polite,
You fought hard enough to win.

Phil Rose's Politiku

"Nice young black man," this
"Jesus was a rabbi," that
Liberal white guilt.

Irene Gravina's Politiku

"I chose Obama
From the start of the campaign,"
my Mom says proudly

Matt Cohen's Politiku

Mom's a liberal
She's also conservative
Mostly she just cares

Mom's view is open
Picks her issues one by one
Then changes her mind.

Susanna Speier's Politiku

Mom tells me about
Her Zayde's Roosevelt Clock
"Wheel for a New Deal"

Dr. Susan Corso: Mother's Day and the Universal Law of the Garbage Truck

2009-05-10T14:25:47Z

If my clientele is any indication, many of us have psychospiritual garbage around our mothers. A client sent this story to me via email. It seemed perfect for the aftermath of Mother's Day.

"One day I hopped in a taxi and we took off for the airport. We were driving in the right lane when suddenly a black car jumped out of a parking space right in front of us. My taxi driver slammed on his brakes, skidded, and missed the other car by just inches!

"The driver of the other car whipped his head around and started yelling at us. My taxi driver just smiled and waved at the guy. I mean, he was really friendly. So I asked, 'Why did you just do that? That guy almost ruined your car and sent us to the hospital!' This is when my taxi driver taught me what I now understand as The Universal Law of the Garbage Truck.

"He explained that many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it and sometimes they dump it on you. Don't take it personally. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on.

"Don't take their garbage and spread it to other people at work, at home, or on the streets. The bottom line is that successful people do not let garbage trucks take over their day."

So what does garbage have to do with Mother's Day? Plenty. Ever heard the adage ... forgive or relive? It's true. Forgive your mother. Do it for yourself, not for her. Otherwise you're stuck in recycling your garbage about her.

Think of it this way: your mother is not just your mother. She is a person in her own right, and she's doing (or did) the very best that she can with what she's got (or had) at any given time.

Have a blessed, garbage-free week!

Visit Susan Corso's website at www.susancorso.com.

Melissa Hapke: In Memory of Mom

2009-05-10T13:24:09Z

My mother passed away Thursday after a three year battle with lung cancer. Her funeral is Sunday. I have mixed feelings about her passing.

I'm trying very hard to remember the good things that happened with my family while we were growing up. Baking cookies at Christmas comes to mind. We'd take a vacation every summer. Until you've traveled in the bed of a truck with an aluminum topper, you don't know what those trips were like. Especially when you consider most of them were in July and August.

We had fun, but we also had our problems. Mom wanted things done her way, and her way was not mine. Funny thing is, I got to where she was directing me eventually. It took awhile, but we got there.

While growing up, I couldn't appreciate the sacrifices she made for me, or for us.

I do now though. We never had money to spare and I remember periods when she and dad would go with less food than my brother, sister and I so we could eat. I never really thought much about it, but I think that was one of the biggest sacrifices she made for us. She always passed it off as she was dieting.

She and dad tried to keep their fights to themselves, too. Every now and then I would hear them, and I thought it was healthy because both of them had a problem with communication. They'd wait until things blew up instead of working through it step by step.

Since I live near St. Louis and she was near Chicago, we'd talk by phone a lot. Sometimes "Wheel of Fortune" would be on when I called. We'd sit there solving the puzzles while we were talking. I always thought it was dad who enjoyed that show, apparently mom did more so than he does.

One particular Mother's Day comes to mind for me, the weekend of my Junior Prom in May 1987. My 18th birthday present was my prom dress. I went stag with one of my friends. We had a lot of fun and stopped at one of her friend's houses on the way home. Well, we drank. I must have woken dad up when I stumbled up the stairs, but he didn't say anything then.

Nope. He waited until about 8 a.m. and woke me up, hangover and all.

"Are you going to make breakfast for your mother?" he asks. He was persistent and I was pissed, one because I was hung over and two because I knew mom wouldn't be up until noon. I know this is more of a dad story, but I learned a lesson about it too. I never came home drunk again. I don't know how much mom knew about what happened, because I never asked her, but I'm pretty sure she knew it had something to do with dad and me butting heads.

I know mom is not suffering now, but I can feel the loss. I'll deal with it, but I'm not sure how well. Remembering the good times will help and honor her memory more than if I just stop moving forward with my life.

Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner: Mother's Day is Going Viral: Talking Babies and a National Mom Uprising

2009-05-10T13:02:16Z

Michelle Obama isn't the only one flexing her right to bare arms. The millions of women proclaiming their friends as Mom of the Year this past week is nothing short of a national mom uprising. This week 7 million people viewed the MomsRising.org Mother of the Year Award customizable video in honor of Mother's Day.

You can watch the video here.

Along with Beyonce, ponytail advice, and naked dogs, this video includes serious facts about mothers in the U.S. today. So in case you were too smitten by baby Joshy talking, and too distracted by watching President Obama sing the praises of your favorite mom, to read the text crawl at bottom of video screen, here's what it says:

"Moms in this country are way undervalued - Mothers make 73 cents to every dollar an equally qualified man makes at the same job - Single mothers make only about 60 cents to a man's dollar - Those two facts, it should be noted, really suck - especially because men aren't making much these days either - Over a lifetime mothers are paid anywhere from $400,000 to $2 million less than men doing the same work due to gender wage disparity. That's a ridiculous "Mommy Tax." A full quarter of US families with children less than 6 years old live in poverty - Well duh, all these other statistics would lead to this likely outcome - Motherhood is one of the hardest full-time jobs that does not come with Social Security or health benefits - It does however come with a lot of labor as well as love."

It's important to have fun celebrating moms, especially on Mother's Day. As the video says, "A big thank you for an often thankless job."

It's also time to get serious about insisting that mothers are treated fairly in the work place and to demand that economic security policies for families be a top priority in our nation, including: Creating a healthcare system that works for both families and business; passing paid Family and Medical Leave Insurance; moving fair pay bills forward like the Paycheck Fairness Act and the Fair Pay Act of 2009 so gender based wage disparities can be addressed front and center; guaranteeing a minimum number of paid sick days that all people can earn each year in our nation; and making sure that all children have quality early learning opportunities, are all ways we can lower the wage gap between moms and non-moms while also helping our children and nation thrive.

The fact of the matter is that our nation still needs to catch up to the modern reality that the majority of mothers are juggling an unprecedented number of roles at home and in the workplace at the same time. More than three-quarters of moms are in the labor force and families are increasingly relying on their wages to make ends meet, yet there is a profound wage and hiring bias against mothers.

There are 83 million of moms in our nation--and a full 80 percent of American women have children by the time they are forty-four years old. In other words, the vast majority of women in our nation become mothers so these issues directly touch all of us in some way or another. The fact that a study last year found that women with equal resumes are 79% less likely to be hired if they are mothers--and another study found that women without children earn 90 cents to a man's dollar while mother's earn only 73 cents--show that we've got to address these issues front and center as we rebuild our nation because we all lose when such a large portion of our nation is falling behind.

Let's join Michelle Obama in flexing her right to bare arms. Moms are powerful. Our voices are strong and our networks are vast. Watch the video, send it along to all the moms in your life to celebrate what they do each and every day, and then sign up to join the national uprising with MomsRising.org in honor of Mother's Day.

Chris Kyle: The Best Damn Sports Mom, Period.

2009-05-10T13:00:36Z

For Mother's Day, I gave my mom a signed copy of Mike Krzyzewski's new book The Gold Standard. Even though she's a Tar Heel, my mom likes and cheers for Coach K and Duke -- and the University of North Carolina.

That's unusual, I know, but my mom is an unusual sports fan. She doesn't use the word hate and she's never booed a single team or person in her life.

She gets that sunny disposition from her mom, my 90-year-old grandmother, who not so long ago declared that she wouldn't be reading anymore stories with unhappy endings. Why bother, she said, when there are more than enough happy endings to keep her busy?

That's the kind of logic that explains why my mom is so blissfully unaware of A-Rod's nastier nicknames; why she doesn't get angry at Brett Favre for retiring and un-retiring; and why she never gets agitated by the likes of Skip Bayless and Jay Mariotti, ever.

My mom saves her energy for the people and teams she likes the most. When her Boston Celtics lost to the Orlando Magic the other night, my mom sent me an email saying, "Well, it was nice to see JJ Redick playing for Orlando."

She also roots for the New England Patriots, but my mom never made excuses or cast blame during the Spygate scandal in the fall of 2007. She was too busy rooting for her favorite team, the Boston Red Sox, as they marched to their second World Series win in 89 years.

My mom's love for all things Red Sox-related sparked a much sadder email from her on Thursday. But no, she wasn't worried about Manny Ramirez's legacy or his 50-game suspension.

She was worried about Jerry Remy, the voice of Red Sox Nation, who is battling lung cancer. Maybe that's why my mom doesn't watch ESPN that much. Although he will never be the subject of an ESPN Special Report, the RemDawg is a person truly worth worrying about. Just like my mom, I've always liked him, as long as I can remember, I think.

In his memoir Trying To Save Piggy Sneed, John Irving wrote:

A fiction writer's memory is an especially imperfect provider of detail; we can always imagine a better detail than the one we can remember. The correct detail is rarely, exactly, what happened; the most truthful detail is what could have happened, or what should have.

With those words in mind, I think my mom is the real reason I love sports as much as I do, although it's possible that my older brother was a bigger influence.

Growing up, I was never as big or strong or fast as my brother, but I could be his equal as a fan. We rooted for the same teams and dressed up like the players for Halloween.

Or maybe I became a sports fan because of the T-shirts. I like T-shirts a lot. Any sports fan who came of age in Massachusetts during the '80s remembers the "Squish the Fish" and "Berry the Bears" shirts for sale during the Patriots' run to Super Bowl XX.

My favorite shirt was a green and white ringer tee. It said "Boston's Best Six Pack" on the front and featured beer bottle-like caricatures of the Celtics starting five, plus sixth-man Bill Walton.

I loved that shirt so much and wore it so often that it surprises me, now, that I ever lost it. It probably came apart in the washer or dryer after its zillionth wearing.

Years later, I came across a street vendor at the Spanish Steps in Rome selling that shirt. It was too small so I didn't buy it. It's a decision I still regret. That same vintage shirt featured the same vintage Celts who were trailing the Detroit Pistons by one point with only seconds to go in the pivotal fifth game of the 1987 Eastern Conference Finals.

"Now there's a steal by Bird," Johnny Most screamed through the radio in our kitchen. "Underneath to DJ -- he lays it in...oh my, this place is going crazy!"

Johnny Most's call and my family's ensuing celebration is one of my favorite sports memories, right up there with Laettner's shot, Henderson's homer, Vinatieri's clutch kicks, and Dave Roberts' steal.

Although the aging '87 Celts went on to beat those upstart Pistons, they lost to the Los Angeles Lakers in the Finals, but my memory of that defeat has faded over time.

As my mom and grandmother would say, Boston's dramatic victory over Detroit was our happy ending that year and the only one worth remembering, and mothers know best.

Katie Halper: Top 10 Worst Films to See on Mother's Day

2009-05-10T11:15:48Z

Throw Mama From the Train (self explanatory)

Sophie's Choice (most painful choice ever + holocaust = what's not to love)

A Cry in the Dark (dingo infanticide)

Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead (I would be remiss if I didn't endorse this as an amazing film)

Bambi (I don't want to talk about it. It's too upsetting)

Knocked Up (could be awkward for the accidents out there. Also it's overrated and politically a cop-out)

Requiem for a Dream (The mother who could pill pop you under the table)

Maternal Instincts (best post-hysterectomy repetitive pencil tip breaking scene ever)

Spanking the Monkey (the oldest taboo updated by David O. Russell)

My Stepson My Lover (or any of these other Lifetime original gems /Mother knows Best/ Mother, May I Sleep With Danger/ My Baby is Missing/ Mom at 16)

Sweet Yo Mama Jokes To Make Mother's Day Even More Special (VIDEO)

2009-05-10T10:59:20Z

Jimmy Kimmel picked up on a new trend this week, noting that "yo mama jokes" are different on mother's day. They tend to be kind and endearing instead of besmirching of a woman's weight, height, sexual proclivity, teeth, etc. In fact the men he found (read: paid to make these jokes) on the street said some lovely things like: "Your mom's like Halle Berry, she's just all gorgeous and shit."

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Katie Saddlemire: To Mom, With Love: HuffPosters Share Their Mother's Day Stories

2009-05-10T10:24:25Z

On Friday, I asked for you to share your Mother's Day Stories, and share you did! While I would have liked to publish them all, here are some that stood out:

Once when I was eight I fell on my bike and hit my shinbone pretty hard. When I came home, only my Dad was there and he bound it up in about 15 yards of bandage and I felt honored and heroic in my bulky bandage like a homecoming warrior. When my mother came in, she took one look at my heroic bandage, unwrapped it and put on a tiny bit of plaster while telling me to stop fussing. I felt both relieved, a bit silly, and a bit disappointed about this anti-climax but realized that was so my Mom - practical, down-to-earth and totally unflappable. My attempts to emulate her in that respect have so far been highly unsuccessful but I'm trying!

- Helle Sannig, Kemer

My mom. I LOVE my mom. I am the youngest of three girls. My mom had me when she was 26. As the older girls started going to school, we had more time together to get to know each other. She encouraged me to be different and silly and smart and well... the person that I am today. When I didn't think preschool was enough of a challenge, she allowed me to be a preschool drop-out. Whee! Years went by, she went back to school in the seventies and then my parents got divorced and she went out in the real world instead of being a stay at home mom. Things haven't changed that much in our feelings for each other. My grandma, my mom and I had a very symbiotic relationship. Now that my grandma's been gone for almost 9 years, it's up to my mom and me to carry on this weird relationship of mutual friendship and support. She is quite a cool mom to support, too. She's a writer. She's funny. She's an activist. She's a builder. She's open to new ideas and adventures. She's my mom! I love Jonquil Wilson!

Erin, San Diego, CA

When I was in elementary school and our first grade class was preparing for a Thanksgiving Day celebration, our teachers sent home instructions (addressed to classroom mothers,naturally) for making costumes for the festivities. For the boys, there were instructions on how to make Pilgrim hats and "Indian" headdresses. For the girls: Pilgrim bonnets. I hated my bonnet. The boys' hats were tall and stately with a shiny tinfoil buckle. The headdresses boasted brightly colored feathers and beads. The bonnets were, in my 6 year old view, dull as dirt and, besides, they made my ears itch. I asked my mom why there weren't any girl Indians. She was quick to inform me that there were, and that the women in many Native American tribes held places of honor and respect. As she relayed all the stories she knew about Pocahontas and Sacajawea, she realized there was something more she had to do. She called my teacher. She spoke with my school principal. She addressed my class. That year, there were more little girls adorned in Native American garb- by their own choosing- than you would believe.

A month later , Mom took on the "separate but equal" grab bags for December's celebrations. In her lifetime. my mother broke barriers , leaving her more traditional career as a teacher to pursue one in the trades. She has been a liscenced plumber, a member of our State House of Representatives, and a candidate for the National Congress. She has also sung lullabyes, consoled nightmares, mended scraped knees, cheered at soccer matches, made a mean pot roast, and successfully raised three confident, capable, and compassionate human beings. And she's not finished yet. Many of the girls I grew up with had moms who told them they could be anything and do anything when they grew up without limitation: very few of them were lucky enough to have mothers who showed them exactly how that's done.

- Julia, Danbury, CT

When I had my son at the age of 23 I was overwhelmed with what to do with this little person that had just entered my life. I knew the only way I could get through the baby years was to move closer to my mom. After arriving in Albuquerque my mom went into full grandma mode. My son still talks about how she would come and get him every Wednesday for "Doughnut Day" and going to different events like the Albuquerque Balloon Festival with her. I cherish the times we went to Lilith Fair together and also to Universal Studios theme park where I made her go on every ride. She was the type of person that everyone knew and when I still go back to the town she grew up in I always have at least one person say "Aren't you Vicki's daughter?" My mom died five years ago and I guess the thing I miss about her most is when she would show up for a weekend or a week to visit and would just take care of me like she did when I was little. I would come home from work to a clean house, my laundry done and something cooking in the kitchen. You never really grow out of needing to be taken care of sometime. I crave that now and I realize it every time I just need my mom.

Aimee, Missoula, MT

At the age of nineteen my mother, then a single college student in 1954, was a camp counselor taking a group of girls for a morning horseback ride in the mountains. She was thrown, and her spinal cord severed, rendering her paraplegic for the rest of her life. Eventually, after enduring numerous surgeries and excruciating rehabilitation, she returned to college, where she met the man who would soon become her husband, and my father. Growing up, my mother's disability informed my every decision, and greatly influenced my perspective of myself, the world, and my place in it. One day, when I was a college student about the same age as my mother when she sustained her life-changing injury, I lamented to her for the ten thousandth time the fact that when legs were handed out by the gods I was last in line and so got stuck with the short, unattractive ones. She responded to me simply, "Kristine, just be glad they work." I have never forgotten those words, which still echo in my ears more than 20 years after her passing, as I strive to raise my own daughter, who will never know her grandmother except through the stories of her that I will tell.

- Kristine O'Daly, Auburn, CA

My mother is a goddess. No, really. Her given name is Aphrodite, which caused her great humiliation growing up during the melting pot era in the Greektown area of downtown Detroit. So, she goes by the nickname Fritz, which was given to her by her brother during their teens. Fritz can fix anything! In fact, when my friends and I find ourselves trying to solve a home repair problem we say, "What would Fritz do?"

She's 82 now, so she's slowing down a bit, but some of her most recent home repairs are replacing her garbage disposal, taking apart her snowblower and re-attaching a part that came loose, replacing the spark plugs on her lawnmower, and cleaning out her gutters. I could go on. I once helped her replace a toilet, and over the years I've seen her take apart and repair washers, dryers and refrigerators, and perform maintenance and reapairs on numerous family automobiles. When I was in high school, she bought a refrigerator that didn't quite fit where the old one was, so she tore down and rebuilt the wall between the kitchen and family room to make it fit. My mom is a true bad-ass, and I feel lucky to have learned how to be a strong woman from her. She was so proud recently when I emailed photos of a new fence I built all by myself. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

- CJ Essa, Austin, TX

My mom wasn't just a regular old mom; my mother was a bit radical for the suburban housewife that she was. She had graduated from Berkeley; she listened to jazz, read loads of books, and was an ardent politico. She was anti-war, pro-choice, and believed in civil rights and civil disobedience.

One August morning the gang showed up for another long day of swimming. A few hours later we were barely water logged and my mom came rushing out into the backyard in her bikini and a New Year's Eve party hat whooping it up like a wild banshee. She hollered at us to get out of the pool because we were going to McDonalds! Back in those days going to a fast food joint was a real treat, and not having a clue why she was suddenly struck with the urge to indulge us in burgers, none of us were going to question her motives; we were out of the pool in no time flat.

Still dripping wet, she shuttles us kids into her VW Squareback and tossed us back a box with party favors in it and said, "adorn yourselves kiddos, we're about to celebrate historical justice." We gleefully pulled out streamers and hats, horns and masks, maracas and tambourines and plotted our procession. "Wait a minute mom, what exactly are we celebrating?" I shouted over the festive cacophony. Suddenly, like a power outage, she stopped the car and turned around and got serious with us. "Kids, last night on television President Nixon read his resignation letter, and today - Friday, August 9, 1974 - it is official, he has resigned. Truthfully the SOB should have been impeached, but the humiliation of his resignation is an acceptable start."

We all marched in to McDonald's in our bathing suits and streamers chanting at the top of our lungs, "Nixon resigned, Nixon resigned, ding dong the Dick is dead, Nixon resigned!" My mom gaily called out above our ballyhoo that hamburgers and french fries were on her. I'm sure that all the other Orange County parents at McDonalds that day didn't appreciate my kooky liberal mom; they looked at her with a contemptuous patrician fear for her un-mother-like aplomb. And you know what? She couldn't care less and neither did we; my mom was cool and she cared about what truly mattered.

- Cat Gwynn, Los Angeles, CA

As always, thank you for sharing your stories -- and please, continue to do so in the comments below! How did you celebrate the mother's in your life today?

Donna Fish: Love and Hate in the Time of Parenting

2009-05-10T10:21:16Z

I had to write this in honor of Mother's Day.

I lift a glass and salute all of you mothers out there who can be real and down with your intense negative feelings towards your kids at times.

With all of the love love love, think positive self-help mantras out there; let's flip this one. Check your guilt at front door. (Unless of course you are losing control all of the time. Not some of the time, ALL OF THE TIME.)

IT is vital to embrace your intense feelings of hatred at times, for your kids. . This is not to give yourself a free pass, or a rationalization, but rather to help you understand that it is part of teaching your children how to hold on to a loving person, in the face of disappointment, hurt, anger. Don't you want them to know that you love them even when you are mad at them? It's even more important to teach them that you know they love you even when they behave like assholes to you. This is all part of being human and being in relationships. So don't be scared of it.

I promise you, this is not coming only from the Mom perspective of how I feel at times when I am in the biggest fight with my kids. It comes from the training I have gotten as an analyst, when I was told by one of my best teachers: "Good enough is not only 'good enough', it is vital to help kids tolerate disappointment, and learn to hold onto us in their minds in the face of their own anger and hatred.

Now we are talking primitive feelings here, right? But name me an intense relationship that doesn't involve love and hate, and I will say that is not intimate. Or deeply involved.

Learn to love your hate. I am always drawn to irreverent moms who are willing to be upfront about their angry feelings, and the emotional intensity that can come up in parenting.

We need to model authentic relationships for our kids. They aren't stupid. They know when they are wrong. So don't be scared of your intense disappointment in them, or yes, I will say it again, hatred. So okay, I am being a bit melodramatic here, but hey, I am obviously in touch with my most primitive self. Helps me work it out in the safety and privacy of my own head and calm down enough not to act it out. Not that I don't scream and yell of course, and then come back to apologize for that and work out what got me so pissed off.

Believe it or not, modeling this helps give our kids a tool for soothing themselves. This is the main scaffolding for prevention in overusing drugs, alcohol, food, etc. Separate of whatever biological propensity for addiction our kids might come by genetically.) YES, we CAN give them something in the war against drugs. Intense feelings and processing those feelings is a fear buster. A Depression and Anxiety buster. You can start at home.

Simple. Direct. So don't you be afraid. The feeling passes. Teach your kid it is not the end of the world and you know they still love you, as you do them even when you or they 'feel' the hatred.

I know we don't like to use that word.

Happy Mother's Day!

Visit me at: www.donnafish.com

Kari Henley: Mothers Who Make A Difference

2009-05-10T08:25:27Z

Celebrating Mothers. Clearly one day is not nearly enough to do the job justice. I believe the simple act of mothering a child is Herculean enough for ten holidays. Originally, Mother's Day was created for women to come together and offer their voices for peace. Today I'd like to showcase two mothers who are dedicating their lives to making a difference in the world. One is offering a new breed of computer games that address social justice, and the other is answering a dream to mother many children in Africa. Prepare to be inspired!

Called a "New Radical" by Huff Po's own Julia Moulden as well as a "New Revolutionary" by the Sundance Channel, Suzanne Seggerman is President and Co-founder of Games for Change (G4C) a non-profit and new movement promoting a new genre of videogames that engage players in the most pressing issues of our day: climate change, poverty, global conflicts. Called "the Sundance of video games" for "socially-responsible game makers", G4C is working with Microsoft, mTV, the United Nations and and a variety of NGOs. Suzanne recently won a MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning Competition award. Check out her Huff Po article, "Does Obama Play Video Games?"

Suzanne worked as a documentary filmmaker at PBS for Frontline, when she had her first exposure to the power of video games. She was handed a video game about Central America that can gave her, 'an immediate and up close exposure to issues' to a depth far beyond what she had in other venues. She was hooked.

She had a daughter, and went to graduate school for interactive media, put up personal savings, and started Games for Change with her business partner, who was on unemployment. Together, they started creating a dream.

"After I had a child, my priorities changed, and any time I spent away from her had to be important," Suzanne reflected. "The idea of working for someone else was no longer appealing. I wanted to be doing something incredibly meaningful that made a contribution to the world in some way."

Some of the games are for kids and start at age 3 years old and up. My 10 year-old daughter and I played a game called "Ayiti: the Cost of Life" created by inner city youth in New York, and featuring a family in Haiti who needed to have money, get educated and be happy. It was engaging, tricky and taught us a lot.

"My advice on Mother's Day for those with younger kids is to sit down and play a video game with them. Enter their world and you may be surprised at how engaging they can be, while teaching about social issues," Suzanne suggested. "The computer is their world and a tool they will be using all their lives, why not show them how to use it well?"

The 6th annual Games for Change festival is on May 27-29th in NYC, and is the biggest game event and doubles every year. Called "the Sundance of video games" for "socially-responsible game-makers" the festival purpose is to, 'promote a new genre of video game - games to change the world - for the better."

From video game dreams, to literal dreams come to life - the other special mother I would like to introduce to you is Martha Hoffman. Martha is a mother of three and lives in a Northeastern shoreline suburb. Martha was a happy stay-at-home mom, and had no idea her call to mothering would go beyond her natural offspring and take her across the world.

"It all literally started with a dream one night," Martha began.

She had a dream about a woman who was far, far away caring for children who were very much in need. Eventually, she realized the woman in the dream was herself, but she couldn't figure out where the dream was. Over the course of seven years, the dreams came and went.

Gradually, the dreams became more frequent, until they were coming almost every night, and Martha could not figure out where the dream was. She decided to pray to help her understand what the dream meant. Finally, the dream came again, but this time at the end of it, her grandmother appeared in the dream and handed her a small bark cloth purse she had given Martha as a child. The purse was bought by a friend of her grandmother's who was a missionary in Uganda, Africa.

Martha woke up, and knew in every fiber of her being, the place was Uganda, and she had to go there and help the children. She had a mission, yet was so scared. She had no interest in Africa, and didn't even like to camp! Suddenly, images and stories of Uganda seemed to creep into her life almost constantly, until she gave in. Within four months, she was on a plane. She had no idea what she was supposed to do, but a sense when she got there, she would know.

"I saw poverty more intense than I could wrap my mind around sometimes," she said. "Everywhere I went, the stories and the people were so inspiring to me. There was tremendous beauty and happiness, in spite of such tragedy."

Most of the villages did not have access to fresh water, no toilet facilities and had malaria as common as an everyday cold. Only 50 feet below the ground had fresh water, but the villages had no money to dig a well.

Martha knew what to do.

She came home and began to raise money for a variety of projects including funding livestock, supporting orphans to go to school, and the largest project of all - raising funds to dig a well in a village that supported nearly 1,000 people.

Martha raised that $7900, and went back to help see the well put in. The villagers named the well "Martha," and they call her "Toto," which means Mother. In the past two years, Martha has started a non-profit called, "Call to Care Uganda", has managed to help plant 150 orange trees, deliver hundreds of pairs of Crocs and harmonicas to orphans, and dug four more wells to serve thousands.

Martha is living a dream; a destiny she never knew was planted in her the day her grandmother gave her a tiny purse from Africa, and again when she received it in her sleep.

By the way, guess what Martha's middle name is?
Martha Wells Hoffman.

I will leave you with a star studded video celebrating the original meaning of Mother's Day, with a modern call for help.

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Happy Mother's Day everyone! Do you have a special mother who makes a difference in your life? Share her special story in the comments below or feel free to email me directly at: karihenley@comcast.net. I hope to include some of these women in a future column. For weekly updates, click on Become a Fan.

Wendy Braitman: Why We Can Never Do Enough for Mother's Day (No Really, We Can't)

2009-05-10T08:05:53Z

It's Mother's Day, and I would like to honor my beloved mother, by using the word mother in a sentence as often as possible. No, not that sentence. The next one. I am taking this moment to pay tribute to Anna M. Jarvis, the mother of Mother's Day, who in an ironic twist of fate was never a mother herself. Did I write ironic? I don't honestly see it that way, but rather it was precisely because Ms. Jarvis did NOT become a Mrs. nor a mom, that she devoted her life's work to persuading the nation (and 43 other countries) to officially revere mothers and in doing so, carved out a 24-hour time slot in which we get to feel like we haven't done enough.

Anna was tormented by not doing enough for her Mom. In 1907, a few years after her mother died (and left her a tidy inheritance), she created and led the "Mother's Day Movement," and began one of the most organized and successful letter-writing campaigns in history, reaching out to influential businessmen, religious leaders, newspaper editors, mayors and eventually to governors of every state. Within seven years, a resolution was passed by both houses of Congress for a national observance of Mother's Day. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation calling for a "public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers of our country," setting aside the second Sunday in May, which also commemorated the anniversary of Anna's mother's death.

As it was her mother's favorite flower, and she was in charge, Anna declared the carnation the official Mother Day's emblem. Florists quickly began to reap the benefits. Soon confectioners and card companies wanted a piece of the action, and the holiday got commercialized to such an extent that Anna Jarvis could hardly recognize it. "This is not what I intended," Anna wrote in letters to hundreds of newspapers. "I wanted it to be a day of sentiment, not profit." She spent the rest of her life (and life savings) in desperate battle against those who didn't demonstrate the proper piety and respect for what she considered a holy day, and died penniless and alone.

Anna M. Jarvis was born in 1864 in the rural community of Grafton, West Virginia, and she grew into a tall, attractive, redhead, eager to find her way in the world. She had watched her mother put aside pleasure and ambitions for the considerable duties of motherhood, and Anna wanted more out of life. At 27 and unmarried she took a bold, modern step and moved away from home to live in Philadelphia, working first as a stenographer and then as a writer for the advertising department of an insurance company. As to why she didn't wed, a family friend said, "she had a disastrous love affair when she was young. It left her shocked and disillusioned, and thereafter she turned her back on all men." (My theory is, she wanted a career.) After years of living on her own, Anna moved her widowed mother to Philadelphia. In 1905, she went into a period of "pathological mourning" when her mother died, creating an alter of dried flowers, and talking about little else.

I asked my therapist friend why Anna was so obsessed. "In a word," he said, "guilt." When my dear mother was still alive (did I mention that she was one of the greats!) I used to procrastinate before calling her on Mother's Day, for fear that I hadn't done enough. The first misstep was moving to San Francisco, which put me three time zones away, so my call would land at her New York doorstep in the afternoon. I would always send a card, but a card wasn't flowers (e.g. carnations) and on the rare occasion when I got it together to mail a gift, I wasn't there in person to deliver it. Once, when I timed a visit to coincide with Mother's Day, that effort also fell short because, I figured, my ultimate misstep boiled down to not having a husband or children.

Now that I understand Anna Jarvis, it all adds up. Mother's Day was created by a talented, entrepreneurial woman, who felt terrible about not following in her mother's footsteps. She spent an operatic life trying to make up for it, and embedded in her glorious, global tribute, the essence of never doing enough. But we all keep trying, as we should, because our mothers deserve it (especially mine).

Karen Dalton-Beninato: Mother's Eye

2009-05-10T02:24:24Z

This is a Mother's Day tribute, first posted here two years ago. Since then my mother has mastered getting into a car backwards and upside down. Don't try any of this at home.

My mother has always been funny, odd, unpredictable - there aren't enough adjectives. She could kick a football across our half-acre front yard. She can still kick as high as a Rockette for no apparent reason. My husband points out that I do the same thing.

Last month when I was checking mom into an Alzheimer's ward, she thought it was a girls' dorm because my dad's Alzheimer's ward is on the other side of the hallway. "I'm a basket case," she whispered. "Then you're finally going to the right place!" I said and it seemed to cheer her up. Before checking into the facility, she asked for a 5 minute head start to make a break for it and run for the woods. The woods wouldn't know what hit them.

Here are four things I'd like to thank Mom for. They've instilled my sense of comic timing.

Trips to the wars.

Johannesburg and Soweto as Apartheid was ending. Jerusalem and Beirut during the Arab Israeli conflict. Rhodesia and Zambezia when they were having the war over Victoria Falls. The PTL Club the weekend the feds shut it down.

Most of my childhood trips involved at least one moment of thinking, 'Now, this ain't right."

Thanks for the disaster evacuation preparation.

The roller rink.

Our small town rink closed in the summer and mom stored the candy and soda in a basement freezer. For the most part, we ate fish from our pond or whatever the farmers were planting in the side field that year - rolled wheat, soybeans or raw sweet corn. But all summer long, I'd sneak down to the freezer which wasn't grounded and get a jolt of electricity every time I reached in for a Snicker's bar.

Thanks for the dietary challenge.

A pony.

Her name was Pepper, my dad being a doctor and a would-be gentleman farmer with 40 acres and one horse. Not unlike kids who promise to take care of a dog but don't, the winters got longer and colder, and we hated the hike through the snow. A horse can probably tell when you're over it, and Pepper trotted over to the neighbor's field one day and they kept her. She got to hang out with other horses and we all got to wave when we drove by.

Thanks for the practice in letting go.

The Eye Thing.

Mom is unlucky in the kitchen. One time she sliced through her arm cutting frozen meat and drove to the doctor with the knife still in her arm. Another time our pressure cooker blew up and scalded her eye. The eye was red, oozy, crusted over, and Mom called me on the fact that I couldn't look at it. "It's not that bad," I lied while looking down at the tablecloth.

Later that night, I heard rustling at my window. At first I thought it was tree branches outside, but eventually opened the curtain to check. Pressed up against the window was my mother's hideous eye. I screamed jumped back from the curtain to lock my door.

All she said at breakfast the next day was, "Not that bad, huh?"

Thanks for preparing me for life's surprises.

(now Twittering at @kbeninato)