Reclaiming Mother's Day: What Julia Ward Howe Has To Teach Us

For those who are interested, my article titled Beyond Mere Sentiment: Reclaiming Mother's Day can be found at the link above. Among other things, it contains information on the radical origins of Mother's Day. Below you will find the Mother's Day Proclamation by Julia Ward Howe, (1) one of the great Transcendentalist Women.

Excerpt from Beyond Mere Sentiment:

Julia (Ward Howe) a poet and suffragist, began her work to honor mothers as a radical act. We tend to forget that mothers are, and always have been, politically and socially active....

...The many images of the Great Mother give us a sense of this. Her secret is contained within a paradox of seeming contradictions. She is both and equally, Kuan Yin and Kali, Isis and Morrigan, Aphrodite and Hecate, Lakshmi and Durga, Freya and Ha Hai-i Wuhti. In other, psychologically profound myths, she is portrayed as Medea, who destroyed her children in a fit of rage, and Lysistrata who organized other mothers, stopped a war and saved two cities in the process. To see only one, sweet side of a mother is to ignore the complex, empowering truth of Her; a truth we can’t afford to miss.

Happy Mother's Day to you and yours,

Sia

Mother Days Proclamation by Julia Ward Howe

Arise, then, women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided 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 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.
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 at 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.

Endnotes:

(1) Julia lived from 1819 - 1910 and was married to a man who did not appreciate or support her work. In her journal she wrote: "I have been married twenty years today. In the course of that time I have never known my husband to approve of any act of mine which I myself valued. Books—poems—essays—everything has been contemptible in his eyes because not his way of doing things. . . . I am much grieved and disconcerted." Her personal pain led her to a greater understanding of her own nature and talents and helped her move beyond the limitations of her time and class. Here is one of my favorite quotes from her writing:

During the first two thirds of my life," Howe recalled, "I looked to the masculine idea of character as the only true one. I sought its inspiration, and referred my merits and demerits to its judicial verdict. . . . The new domain now made clear to me was that of true womanhood—woman no longer in her ancillary relation to her opposite, man, but in her direct relation to the divine plan and purpose, as a free agent, fully sharing with man every human right and every human responsibility. This discovery was like the addition of a new continent to the map of the world, or of a new testament to the old ordinances."

La Guitarra - A Song for Mother's Day

Outcasts and girls with ambition
that's what I want to see
- Pink

Margaret was a dear friend of my mother's. A master teacher, and two decades older then Mom, she mentored my mother when she began her career as a science teacher in the early 50's. The two remained friends until Margaret died in the late 60's.

Margaret had married a older man, an widowed officer she met in 1917, during her war service. He went on to do very well in business. They loved to travel together and saw much of the world between the wars. Her husband passed on when he was in his 60's and Margaret was in her early 40's. They had not had children so by midlife, Margaret was a woman of independent means living in a time that glorified young women and dependent mothers. Rather then marry again, or party to no particular end, she choose to go back to work and teach on the East Coast. This is how two strong minded women would meet and form their friendship.

My mother loved to tell me stories about her as I was growing up; how she traveled during summer break and brought back handcrafted art from Africa, India, Asia and Europe to show to her students, (1), how she learned to speak Italian, French and Spanish in her 40's, climbed mountains in her 50's, learn to ride a horse for the first time in her 60's, and continued to do and learn and travel well into her 80's. I met her once when I was 8 when she came out to California where we lived. She brought me a present, a sweater she'd made for my favorite doll out of brightly colored, hand-dyed wool she'd bought from women weavers in Guatemala. I kept it for years. It was in my treasure box, long after the doll itself was gone. It was Margaret who bought us kids our subscription to National Geographic. I would look at those photos of other people and places and dream of traveling the world like Margaret. Growing up as a girl in the 1960's, a time when women were told that their place in the world was at best, horizontal, I found Margaret and my mother to be the inspirations I needed to sing my own heart song, rather then echo the perky, simplistic little ditties the culture wanted us to sing. (2)

So, it was with Margaret in mind that I walked into a music shop yesterday and bought my first guitar. I turn 50 this month. My guitar lessons start that same week. This something I've always wanted to do but never found the time for. That's the beautiful thing about getting older, you can pick wonderful, new adventures to have with each succeeding decade. (3)

I talk to my mother on the phone every day. She is 81. This week she began her new training for her volunteer work in a cardiovascular ward. This spring, she and her lovely dog, Sally, started their training together in a Veteran's hospital. Picture a tall, slender gray haired woman in a pink coat walking a sassy Dalmatian in her matching harness. They grace the halls, greeting the men and women there, and giving them something other then pain and boredom and yet more physical therapy to think about. Well done, Mom and Sally.

Margaret, you never had any children of your body, but you do have children of spirit. Today, I would like to honor those who have a kinship of spirit. Here's to those who inspire us to sing our own song at every stage of life.

Sia

Art

This guitar image is by the Mexican artist Hugo Rodriquez. I love the way he paints the same guitar image over and over, but in a different way each time. His work reminds me of the ways in which Monet would revisit the same subject, like haystacks or train stations or ponds, and give us a new vision with each work, each change of light. Such artists remind me to keep looking.

You can read more about his work at the Guitar Festival website.

Endnotes:

(1) This was long before multiculturalism was fashionable. Some people thought her art collection was primitive or quaint. She saw it as a way to broaden her student's horizons as well as her own.

(2) Years later, when I heard Pink's song, Stupid Girl, I thought, "Margaret would have loved that". When I watch Mona Lisa Smile, it reminds me of what Margaret and Mom were up against.

(3) In my late 30's and throughout my 40's it was all about building a business and working in community and taking care of my family. I still do many of these things but now I can give more time to music and travel and art. Like many women, I've had several careers and I'm looking at retraining for the next one. I like to work and I've always worked hard. I also feel compelled to give back. I know how lucky I am to have choices.