So Many Mothers...

...who fill my heart

I know that’s an odd photo, a woman behind bars, to celebrate some of the women who are mothers who have touched me, but hang on a second. It’s Mother’s Day this week, and most of you will agree that every day is a day to celebrate the only human who can reproduce.

Years ago, when I was a journalist, I spent some time in prisons. Some people would say they should have kept me, but I was there to interview murderers and an assortment of other men and women who committed a crime. Yes, some really were innocent.

Once, when I was visiting someone and was a mother, I thought how compelling it might be to write a story about some of the women in this particular prison who were mothers and were still trying to maintain that role behind bars. It wasn’t easy to get permission, and then convincing some of them to share their deeply personal stories was even harder, but it happened. (I snuck in lots of illegal things, like candy bars, for starters.)

One of the women who agreed had been a drug addicted prostitute who was a single mother. I still weep when I remember her story. She was eventually released early to be with her boys because she had AIDS and was dying. Another woman had been involved in a horrific, brutal murder, and yet all she could think about night and day was her children.

It’s easy to judge, but there’s some truth in the notion of walking in someone else’s shoes. To be present with these women, and the others I talked with, I had to be open to them and their stories, non-judgmental, and try not to cry. I failed at the crying. They had already been judged by enough people and by their own crimes, and they were paying a steep price.

I think about them sometimes, their faces just come to me, and although most of them are no longer alive, it’s impossible to forget that bond they had and what they were trying to do behind bars to maintain those relationships with their once-babies.

You all know about my own mother, who is out right now with my niece shopping as if she’s 57 and not almost 97. I had a Girl Scout Leader, Mrs. Baker, who was a generous, kind, open woman and a Mother I adored. My dear friend Betty from Lehi, Utah, became an unlikely friend. She was decades older, a Mormon, and the mother of, I think, 10 children, two sets of twins for crying out loud. We worked together, and how I loved her. Her death was the impetus for Annie Freeman’s Fabulous Traveling Funeral.

There are more, so many more, and now my own daughter is a mother, and come on! I keep telling her she is miles ahead of me; I had no idea what I was doing, and it’s possible she turned out fabulous by sheer luck.

I also admire women who know they do not want to be mothers. Once, I was talking to a woman, and the subject of motherhood came up. She told me, very quietly, that she knew she wouldn’t be a good mother and had decided not to have children. When I grabbed her for a hug and said, “That’s wonderful!”, she cried in my arms. She said no one had ever been nice to her when she told them of her decision.

Sometimes we just have to throw those cruel idiots onto the side of the road. (There’s quite a pile there these days.)

I’m rambling a bit, but that’s the point of this! Motherhood is the hardest and the most wonderful thing I have ever done, or will do. I’m celebrating by going back to that rained-out campsite where I might try to ignite some of my old lashing skills.

There are so many different kinds of mothers, and I know not all of you had a good one, like I have, and I’m so sorry. There are many mothers who have never given birth; all it takes is love, lots of sacrifice, and the ability to hold the hands of a child and know in your heart that you would die for them. You must also be able to live without sleep, bathing, and pretty much anything else you think you need besides the feel of a tiny hand in yours.

While some of you will be at brunch on Sunday, I’ll be drinking real coffee from my old tin coffee pot and dreaming about kissing my grandsons all over their beautiful faces.

And now, as we did in the old days of journalism…###…this one is over.