Bleep. Blurp. Bog. I have no idea how to celebrate Mother’s Day anymore.
It used to be enough to buy Mom a gift and leave Grandma a message. But now that I mother three adopted girls who call me “Erin” it’s gotten capital-F fraught. Take the cards they’ve procured for me in the past. Words that they would never say aloud come falling out of Hallmark’s mouth. Do they want to call me Mom? Do they think I want them to call me Mom? Or have they, too, gotten some version of the “Motherhood is a woman’s highest calling” message and, for one sweet day, want to include me in the parade?
Rush tells me I have to stop thinking they’re thinking so much.
He and I have been thinking a lot lately about the docudrama series, Mrs. America. It follows conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly (two l’s) as she makes a name for herself opposing the Equal Rights Amendment with a clever, but twisted, argument. American women don’t need equal protection under the law when God has already granted them the greatest privilege of all: childbearing.
Like many philosophers and theologians who came before her, Schlafly mistook natural law for divine intention. If women had wombs, God intended them to use them. If women bore children, God intended them to raise them.
Any student of history knows that this method of deduction has been bad not just for women’s bodies. Same-sex loving bodies couldn’t reproduce with each other. God must not have intended them for intimacy. Black bodies were thought to have smaller brains and be more tolerant of pain. God must have intended them for slavery—and resiliency! It’s this kind of biological determinism that’s behind why it took more than two mad months to arrest two white men in the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. Apparently, some bodies are made to suffer.
That’s what most gets my goad about Phyllis: if motherhood is a status conferred by God, then those who aren’t mothers, or aren’t biological mothers, or aren’t biological mothers who make their children their world, become not just second-class citizens but second-class humans. Deficient, deviant, deformed—in a word, cursed. At the very least, we become unlikeable. At the very worst, women of differing mothering “statuses” become unlikeable to each other. But, then, this has always been the American way: to divide the disenfranchised from themselves.
Instead of mapping human nature onto God’s intentions, I’m more compelled by the opposite. How does what we know about God’s nature guide human intentions? Modern Christians have made so much of God’s first commission in the book of Genesis—“to be fruitful and multiply”—and so little of Jesus’s new commission in the Gospel of John—“to bear fruit that will last.” Yes, God is pro-creative. But that creativity has never been bound by a woman’s womb. God’s legacy has always been bigger than DNA—and, dear God, so is ours. What better evidence is there for a legacy of love than a childless savior who taught we are souls before roles?
“Mothering is love by any means necessary.” These words, written by marginalized mothers of color in the anthology Revolutionary Mothering, are becoming my new mantra. They remind me that mother makes a better verb than noun. That mother makes a better practice than privilege. That we are all mothers, no special gender or gymnastics required.
We are all something-other-than-mothers, too. I count it as one of adoption’s best side effects that I got to keep my first name. But then don’t all mothers? I love my first name. And if I’m lucky, I’ll get a homemade card this year rather than a Hallmark one making an acrostic poem out of it. You know—E is for energetic, R is for real nice—that kind of thing. There’s always one word you can tell they tried real hard to make work, and that word always becomes my favorite. It reminds me they’re human. It reminds me ‘human’ is my first and greatest vocation, too.
So this Mother’s Day, I don’t know know what in the what we’re going to do. My mom is coming over; there are some benefits to parents with bad boundaries during a pandemic. (Love you, Mom.) We’ll FaceTime the girls’ birth mom for a tamale-making tutorial; Rush will be leading the shuck-show. And I’m lobbying for lavender cupcakes that I will 100% have to order myself.
If Mother’s Day rankles, please remind me that there are 364 days a year when I can celebrate myself using some other such metaphor—and, also, that Monday is my sleep-in day.
XO,Erin
Want more tools for practicing purpose?
If you didn’t catch the Mother’s Day devotionals I did for Red Letter Christians this week, blessing the less celebrated faces of mothering, you can download them here. If you do share, please cite me! I also made short videos to go along with each day that you can find on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram by following @HeyErinLane. It was a fun ride, and now I need to go outside.
A friend pointed me to a fantastic-looking resource from activist and theologian Christena Cleveland called Christ Our Black Mother Speaks. I haven’t dug in yet but it strikes me as required reading for any church person leading others through this non-liturgical holiday.
Already cruised through your usual shows? Put Mrs. America on Hulu in your new line-up. The real-life history lesson is riveting enough without the actresses who star in it being so freaking brilliant: Cate Blanchett is Phyllis Schlafly, Rose Byrne is Gloria Steinem, and Uzo Aduba is Shirley Chisholm to name a few. Gah, women, ammaright?!?
