Dateline: 5/12/00
This weekend, we celebrate Mothers. For the most part, the celebrations will be about sweetness and light, flowers and candy; honoring the gentle nurturing spirit that is a central part of motherhood.
But there is another spirit central to motherhood too, and no less honorable. Mothers are warriors. They fight for the future of their families and our species, and no enemy will find a more implacable foe when either of those are threatened.
It was not the nurturing spirit that prompted Donna Dees-Thomases to organize the "Million Mom March" to demand "common sense" handgun controls in our society. When she saw nursery-school children being led away from a shooting spree at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in California, it was the warrior, not the nurturer, that said "Enough! We will end this."
Even the origins of Mother's Day are rooted in the warrior spirit. Most historians credit Anna Jarvis with achieving the national holiday that we celebrate today. Anna's crusade to honor her mother was a hard-fought campaign, a battle waged over seven years. The mother she sought to honor, Ann Marie Reeves Jarvis, was no stranger to crusades herself. Ann Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker, first organized "Women's Work Days" in 1858 to improve sanitation in her community. According to the Women's History Project website, Ann Jarvis firmly believed that mothers make the best community activists. Throughout the next 50 years of her life, she proceeded to prove it.
It was her mother's dedication to community activism that inspired Anna Jarvis to crusade for the "mother's memorial day" her mother had often spoken of. She wrote hundreds of letters to legislators, executives, and businessmen on both state and national levels. She was a dynamic speaker and passed up no opportunity to promote her project. The idea of an observance to recognize the contributions of mothers spread across 45 states through her efforts, before finally being proclaimed a national holiday by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914.
Many historians also point to Julia Ward Howe as an instrumental figure in the history of Mothers Day. Howe is probably best known as the author of The Battle Hymn of the Republic. But Howe was much more than a poet with a single poem to her credit. She was a activist for abolition, peace and women's equality throughout her whole life.
In 1870, having seen the devastation of war in personal terms during her work in the Civil War - not only with wounded soldiers, but with their widows and orphans as well - she issued a Declaration calling all mothers to arise and oppose war.
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.
Julia Ward Howe would have felt right at home at the Million Mom March.
And yet, the "Armed Informed Mothers March," a counter-march organized by the Second Amendment Sisters, is also a tribute to the warrior spirit with which that declaration was written 130 years ago. It was the warrior, not the nurturer, that prompted five mothers to organize the counter-march in support of the right to bear arms, to say: "We will defend the right to protect ourselves and our families."
Such attitudes are no different than that of the ultimate "Warrior Mom" - Boudicca. Whipped by Roman soldiers, and forced to watch the rapes of her daughters, Boudicca (sometimes spelled Boadicea) spent the rest of her life exacting her revenge on Romans. Leading her troops, she slaughtered thousands, and destoyed the three major Roman colony towns of Londinium (London), Verulamium (St. Albans), and Camulodunum (Colchester), before her rebellion was defeated.
Warriors. Protectors. Nurturers. In short, mothers. They are all fighting for the same goal. Mothers don't wage war over such petty things as turf or possessions. Mothers fight to make the world safer for their families, and better for their children. From skinned knees and first proms to guns and nuclear waste, Mothers are the front-line warriors in the eternal battle to make everything alright.
Karen
Pictures from the Million Mom March, courtesy of Women's History Guide Jone Johnson Lewis.
More pictures from the Million Mom March, courtesy of U.S. Politics Guide John Aravosis.
Mother's Day Links
All about Mother's Day - a collection of links from Women's History Guide Jone Johnson Lewis.
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