(Image courtesy of Annie Spratt)
Now I have a few things to say about Mother’s Day and you’re not gonna like it. I have two wonderful daughters who could be mothers themselves some day. But as their mother, I caution them — especially during these long corona days when I just cannot hide how epic, how wrenching and how life-and-death it is to be a mother in charge of lives, and a single mother at that. So this piece is especially for all the single mothers out there who, as girls, culture might have sold them another version of a Hollywood romcom, a romance not with Prince Charming, but the romance of motherhood with Baby Charming the Savior. But the moment the young princess turns into a real mother is the moment she gets reality-checked, eyelids ripped off, and inducted into institutional womanhood. In this culture, our Mother’s Day holiday strangely celebrates mothers who are powerless, shamed, underpaid, burnt out, desexualized, ignored, and trapped in an isolating nuclear family system with little support.
I know, I know - Mom, why can’t you just smile through brunch and suffer all the handmade gifts of appreciation?
Because the reality is that the moment a woman becomes a mother is the moment that feminism goes silent. You’re told that world is your oyster when you’re a single career girl with all the freedom and choice in the world. Then you go ahead and buy the romantic promise, get pregnant and now shit is real. Exit romance. Enter the economics-based institutions of marriage, workforce, education, healthcare, and religion.
Mother’s Day is hard for me because motherhood is hard for me. Not because I don’t like being their mom, but because being a mother is such a supremely powerful role. You give life and damn, you can wreck it bad if you’re not careful, these innocent defenseless little beings absorbing us 24/7, these mirrors of ourselves who are mirrors of our own mothers. I think of the goddess Kali, the mother-destroyer who dances on the corpse of her husband, that’s how powerful motherhood is.
And I say, “Keep dancing, Kali. And Happy Mother’s Day to you.”
Woo, glad I got that off my chest! Gotta go eat brunch now. #Coronashitstory