Mother's Day 2014

All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.

                                                            -Abraham Lincoln

 

            I am not a professional writer. I went to school for a long time, but for other things. But, as in all my blogs, I have something to say-- certainly something about Mother's Day. I have never known anyone who could not talk about their mother. In a military hospital, every wounded man talks about his mother. Every homosexual boy talks about his mother-- I have never known a gay male to talk about his father. I am a world traveler, and have visited every continent. From one side of the world, to the other, one thing is constant, one unforgettable, inerasable, human emotion: mother-to-child, child-to-mother, love for each other. Skin color, age, sex, or economic standing makes no difference; love is always present.

            I was in the jungle of Rwanda, Africa, when I met a pregnant pigmy mother. She was holding one baby with one arm and another with her other hand. I said to her, "You are a wonderful mother." She understood, and I knew these were probably some of the only kind words she had ever heard.

            At Mt Hagen, in the highlands of New Guinea, at a Sing-Sing festival, to a pregnant mother, decked out in her bird-of-paradise feathers, holding twin babies, I said, "You are a marvelous mother." She understood. Every mother understands these words, and I use them often when I speak of her child: You have done a good job.

            In Africa, mothers, will walk for miles, with water jugs between them, or on their heads, searching for water for their children. I once made some women in India very mad. They nearly whipped me. In a land, where sacred cows get more concern than children, I said, "You see these peasant women heading to the fields, pregnant. She will squat in the field, have the baby, tie it into some cloth, put it onto her back as a papoose, and then continue working all day. There is nothing to having a baby, or motherhood."

            I am probably the only grandchild, paternal or maternal, who remembers my grandmothers. When my grandmothers were in their caskets, my mother in her casket, I always looked at their hands, hands that had cared for their children and grandchildren, hands that had cared for the sick, hands that had delivered babies, and laid out the dead. The poor people in the community, those unable to send for a doctor or undertaker, always called on my mother or grandmother to deliver the babies, to care for the dying or dead. 

            I was raised in Eastern North Carolina which was, in my childhood, a desert of poverty. Women worked in cotton mills, pushing looms all day long. I saw my own mother work all day, stringing green tobacco onto sticks, in order to make one dollar. One of my male employees told me about his mother, dragging him on a cotton picking sack, as she picked cotton. Most of us came from mothers/grandmothers who never knew the experience of a manicure, never experienced the shuffling of playing cards in a bridge game. These women never had their names on the society page, their names only in their obituary. They only knew hard work and hard times, always with the goal of expressing love which only a mother can show.

            Injustice in America has sunk as low as the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean (lowest depth of the Pacific Ocean). Bullies in costume, both on the streets and behind judicial benches, harass and make miserable the lives of tax paying, god fearing, hard working citizens as the criminals take over the streets. Political mediocrity has placed political hacks in positions of prominence (shackled to politicians, never do wells, they can only get jobs as political appointees, in liquor stores, post offices, and as magistrates of the law, where, in their own jurisprudence, they collect worthless checks, etc.) I was in one of these magistrate's offices, early one morning on some type of business. The magistrate said, "Doctor, I will be with you in a few minutes." An older white-haired couple sat in front of his desk. A young man, of about 18, was brought in, barefoot, handcuffed, and only wearing trousers. He was either a grandson, or a child of their old age. They were trying to bail him out of jail, putting up their house as bond. This irascible magistrate told them that they would have to get a real estate appraisal. I must get much older before I will ever be able to forget the sorrow in this mother's eyes.

            Most mothers I have known never knew about tattoos, would never believe that a mother would have an abortion, would never believe that two males, or two females, would marry. They would never believe that young beautiful faces, male or female, would submit to piercing of any type. The only piercing they knew anything about was the piercing of the side of our blessed Lord, in the presence of his mother. Yesterday, today, and forever, I wish I were able to express my feelings about many things, especially the God-given gift of motherhood. In a world of misinformation, government controlled deceit. Can any human mind think of anything more important than the God-given sense of motherhood. If only young people, raised in ghettos, could live on the farm and see the "mothering" of animals, a cat transporting a kitten in her mouth, chicks peaking out from under a mother hen's wings. Just think, more ghetto-babies are aborted than born.

            On a ship to the Arctic, I met a woman who had lost both breasts to breast cancer. She told me about her cosmetic surgery, the surgery building up tissue for breasts. She said, "I am so thankful that God spared me this tragedy until I could have my babies and breast feed them, give them the natural immunity which they so deserve." Jesus said that he had come that we might have life, and have it more abundantly. (John 10:10) That abundant life comes to each of us by motherhood.