mother’s day

by dorothy henderson - western australia based media stringer

It seems that every story written now starts off with a paragraph or a comment related to the Covid 19 pandemic that has gripped the world for over a year now, and there is no question that it has had an impact on every aspect of our lives. Including Mother’s Day.

But in 2021, in Australia, Mother’s Day is so different from that of last year.

As I write, facemasks are still being worn in some places in Perth, Western Australia; Covid-19 updates are a feature of our lives; the daily death rate soars in India, and hotel quarantine continues to test our policies of protection.

But we are in a better place: this time last year, many of us were unable to visit our mothers. The easing of restrictions and vaccinations are erasing the agony of separation for many of us, even though the undeniable geography of Australia still precludes some of us from seeing our mothers on the day that is theirs.

As I thought about the approach of this special day, my mind flew back to previous stories I have written on the subject, back when I was a proper journalist and had to write six or seven stories to fill the space between the advertisements that promoted Mother’s Day gifts (perfume, toasters…and so on). I remember writing about the origins of “Mother’s Day”, so was prompted to rekindle my knowledge of the past. 

Searching for a reputable source of information, I glanced fleetingly over the Mother’s Day sale ads that flashed tantalisingly onto my screen.

Harper’s Bazaar: “So many chic last minute Mother’s Day gifts are on sale right now! From the lip balm Meghan Markle wore on her wedding day (I wondered if it was guaranteed to improve family relations?) to fluffy cloud like towels and beyond.”

Vogue: “The best Mother’s Day Sale and Items to Impress Mum.” Jewellery , beauty products and other lavish gifts ranging in price from $140 to $550 (US).

But then there was balance: The Pioneer Woman  (thepioneerwoman.com.) stated that “…any mom will tell you that the greatest gift she could receive is spending time with her kids”, with one mother saying as her children had grown and started to leave home, she was “…thrilled by a ‘kiss on the cheek from whatever child is around that day.”

The latter sentiments would have pleased the woman who pushed for Mother’s Day to become a feature of our calendars in the first place.

According to Vibeka Vimena, Ann Reeves Jarvis was a mother who cared for other people’s children along with her own. As a mother who lost nine children at a time when disease meant infant mortality was high, she was a humanitarian and active member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in Grafton, West Virginia. From 1858, she ran Mothers' Day Work Clubs to combat high infant and child mortality rates, mostly due to diseases that ravaged their community. 

Vimena writes that Mrs Jarvis, who spent her life mobilising mothers to care for their children, wanted mothers' work to be recognised with a memorial day commemorating their services to humanity.

On her death, in 1905, Ann Jarvis’ daughter Anna Jarvis, continued this quest. With the support and financial backing of Philadelphia department store owner John Wanamaker, she succeeded. In 1908 the first celebration of Mother’s Day was held at a Methodist Church in Grafton. On the same day, thousands of people attended an event at one of Wanamaker’s retail stores in Philadelphia. Mother’s Day, in all its commercial glory, was born.

Rather than revel in the fact that she had succeeded in achieving what her mother wanted, Anna Jarvis was mortified by the day’s commercialisation, and spent most of her life battling to rid it off its status as a day of sales and spending.

Unmarried and childless, her quest to give the day its true meaning, as a time to remember mothers close to their children (which is why the apostrophe is before the ‘s’ and not after it: it was supposed to be about recognition of individual mothers, not a mass marketing exercise!) prevented her from benefiting financially while those who exploited our love for our mothers profited or raised funds for worthy causes. Reports indicate that her quest ruined her financially and she died of heart failure in 1948.

As I read about the Jarvis family, and the impact of the day on their family, I almost feel guilty about ever having bought a Mother’s Day card in my life…far better to have made them! And then I reflect on the aging pile of notes and cards made by my own children and I realise that there are no commercially made cards in the pile at all! 

The handwritten, crayon and water-coloured offerings of love are timeless. They are outward expressions of the love young children have for their parents, especially their mother. Coincidentally, one of those wonderful note-writers has recently converted some of our old video tapes so we can watch them now. Technology had rendered them un-viewable for years, but now when I watch them I can see so clearly the love between children and parents. The unquestioning trust that exists in small children.

I can also see, almost as if I am totally separated from the scenes of long ago, the love of parents for their children. And of grandparents of their children. Even though this is “us” I am seeing on the flat screen in front of me, I am seeing the scenes with new eyes. Maybe because one of the children I see as a newborn infant, as a tiny, perfect baby cuddled in her grandmother’s arms, is no longer with us. Deprived of the chance to love that child in a physical sense anymore, I can see so clearly the love we all had for when she was a child. It hurts not to have her here anymore.

Despite that pain of longing, it makes me feel so happy to know that, at least when our children were very little, we loved them passionately. Time and circumstance change the way we interact with one another: children grow into adults, relationships falter, other people become involved…there are the ups and downs that go with evolving lives.

But on this Mother’s Day, another celebration within a pandemic with all the lack of certainty that goes with changing movement restrictions, I look at my own little treasure trove of handmade cards. Affirmations of affection for a parent from a child. I wonder if my own mother has kept hers, the carefully worded missives from children who, on one day a year, are conscious of the role their mothers play in their lives. 

That is all that Anna Jarvis fought for: the reclaiming of Mother’s Day as a special day for mothers and their own children, not a day of mass worship celebrated by all and sundry, but by industry in particular.