Mother's Day of Reconciliation

It’s Mother’s Day today.

A quick internet search will tell you it came about in the aftermath of the American Civil War at the urging of women calling for reconciliation and world peace.

It wasn’t made an official holiday until 1914 to honor the mothers who had lost their children in battle.  It was a boon to the greeting card industry.

As a rule, I don’t think much of Mother’s Day.  I have been a mother for nearly 30 years.  Every day is Mother’s Day.

My own mother had me just before she turned 26.  She stopped working and going to graduate school to be a stay-at-home mother and housewife.  It is difficult to work outside the home when your husband is at sea for weeks or months at a time or does rotating shift work.

She was a devoted aunt, grandmother, and volunteer.  She went back to work part-time as a teacher’s aide in the 1980s and was mother and grandmother to hundreds of children in a subpar school system.

She was a great one for sending greeting cards for any reason at all, not just the expected holidays and birthdays.

I didn’t keep all of the cards and letters she sent to me over the years, but, as I sift through 35 plus years of books and papers in an effort to downsize, I keep finding them tucked into novels and old journals.

She liked to draw little cartoon people in the corners, usually of herself and my father peeking over a wall.  I don’t know the significance of the wall.

I even have a few she wrote to my daughters and sons and I am putting them with the drawings, schoolwork, and handmade cards and notes they gave to me that have miraculously survived seven moves and a few Spring floods.

It has taken me a year to unpack a room full of U-Haul boxes since my last move and I still have half a room of literature and ephemera to organize.

Very little will fit in the tinker wagon (or VW bus) that I plan to live in when I retire for good. I have a lot of work yet to do so as not to leave my children with an apartment full of stuff when I croak.

My mother had an entire house full of stuff when she died.

She even saved the letter that came with my first real paycheck.  I have written proof I have been a wage slave since the age of 15.

It will take years to sort all of it and, quite frankly, I don’t have the energy.  I will let my brother and sister play archeologist and historian.  They have the time and temperament I do not.

I have other battles to fight. Nearly every day I meet or work with yet another casualty of lockdowns, biological warfare, and medical negligence and malfeasance.

It often makes me want to pack up that tinker wagon now.

However, I persist, as it is my testament to my mother who lived a life of service and generosity and yet died slowly and painfully because of greed and inhumanity.

And, perhaps, when I have finished packing up the wagon in a few years, I will find peace and reconciliation, too.

Photo credit: Gypsy Wagons, Custom Wagons, Tiny Houses, Sheep Wagons