When I set out to write a blog for Mother’s Day, my first thought was to document some of the more amazing and even bizarre childbirthing stories from around the world like the five-year-old Lina Medina of Peru who gave birth to a 6lb baby boy in a caesarean operation in 1939. Or 66 yr old Maria del Carmen Bousada from Madrid who birthed a set of twins through in-vitro fertilization only to die 2 years later. Then there is the first wife of Feodor Vassilyev of Shuya, Russia who between 1725 and 1765, gave birth to 67 children, and the largest amount of babies delivered at one time, the Chukwa Octuplets born in 1998 in Houston, Texas. But wait, we can’t forget the live news footage of Sophia Pedro, a Mozambican woman who birthed her daughter in a treetop while raging waters from a four day long flood raced below her. When asked about her ordeal, she merely shrugged it off as if it was another day in the life of a woman. I thought even to write a blog about Thomas Beatie, the first man to become pregnant and have a child, ’cause wouldn’t he then be a mother too? But that’s a whole other story for another day!
My list of truly captivating childbirth stories could go on and on, but then I had to pause for a moment (pause), because anyone who grew up in a community like I did, knows that in truth, Mother’s Day isn’t just for women who birthed children from their own wombs. Mother’s day is for ALL the women that I call ‘surrogate’ mothers who mother the children alongside and in place of the actual child birthing mothers. It’s women like Mother Theresa or the elder in one Nigerian village who has taken care of over 469 orphans and still continues to take them in til this day. Mother’s Day is in honor of all the grandmothers, teachers, ‘mamas’, elders, sisters, daughters, babysitters, caretakers and the like who help to raise the children in the community as if they are their own. Mother’s Day is not to be celebrated only one day of the year, but EVERYDAY! In big ways, little ways, any ways… or at least it should be.
So even though our country has designated today as a day to recognize the importance of our mothers as Webster’s dictionary defines a ‘mother’ to be, I would like to use this opportunity to celebrate and thank all the mother’s in my life present and past who have helped to mold me into the woman and mother I am today. And to recognize that because of the many loving and nurturing ‘surrogate’ mothers in the communities in which we all live, the world as we know it, is a much better place! Happy Mother’s Day!
Oops! Did I also mention the fab-u-lous woman and mother inspired fabric finds for all those great hand-crafted-from-the-heart-no-need-to-break-you-bank-mothers-day-gift-crafts you might find yourself making for your favorite mother today?
