Today is May 11th and on this day in history… well, the dates blur in the haze of human memory, don’t they? Mother’s Day floats across the calendar, landing here in the middle of spring when the world is busy being born again.
The first official Mother’s Day in America happened back in 1914 when Woodrow Wilson signed it into existence. But mothers were here long before presidents and proclamations. They were here before calendars, before we knew to mark the turning of seasons with anything but the length of shadows.
Morning light spills across kitchen tables nationwide. Steam rises from coffee cups. The phone lines hum with calls home. Some mothers receive flowers that will wilt by Wednesday. Some receive nothing but the same silence that’s stretched between them and their children for years.
What strange magic, this thing we call motherhood. The body splits and doubles. One heartbeat becomes two. And then, eventually, two bodies exist where once there was only one. The mathematics of creation never adds up quite right.
Some cultures understand this better than others. The ancient Egyptians worshiped Isis, the mother of all. The Greeks had Gaia. The connection between mother and earth runs deep in our collective memory – both create, both sustain, both forgive more than they should.
We forget, in our greeting card sentimentality, that motherhood isn’t just tenderness. It’s fierce. It’s primal. It’s the wolf that would tear apart anything threatening her pups. It’s the force that pushed us screaming into the world.
The holiday itself has a certain irony. Anna Jarvis, who campaigned to create Mother’s Day, never had children herself. Later, watching the day become commercialized, she fought against the very celebration she’d birthed. Sometimes creators lose control of their creations. Mothers know this better than most.
What does it mean to celebrate mothers on a single day when the work never stops? When the worry never ceases? When the invisible threads connecting mother to child stretch but never break, no matter the distance, no matter the years?
For some, today surfaces grief like a stone in spring soil. For others, it’s a grateful pause, a moment to recognize the hands that steadied us when we first stood wobbling on new legs.
The truth of motherhood exists in quiet moments that never make it onto cards. The 3 AM fevers. The uneaten lunches. The silent drives home after dropping a child at college. The waiting. The constant, endless waiting for someone to return safely to you.
Maybe today means nothing more than remembering we all came from somewhere. From someone. That none of us emerged fully formed into the world. And in that remembering, perhaps we see each other a little clearer, connected by the hands that once held us.
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