MOTHER'S DAY THOUGHTS

Today is Mother's Day in Italy and many other countries, though not the UK, where it was celebrated on 26th March.  For those of us who neither have a mother living nor have become one, it can be a difficult day. For me it is a day on which to avoid social media and here in Italy I steer clear of pasticcerie before lunch, when you see everyone purchasing trays of dolci to take to the family table. It is not that I begrudge people time with their mothers - I am glad for them - but it would be unnatural not to miss mine on such a day.

As many of you know, I had two mothers - the one who bore me and the one who nurtured me -so there are two kinds of "missing" that vie within me on this day. My natural mother has a grave, lovingly tended by the sister with whom I was reunited only recently and my adoptive mother has no memorial except in my heart - because she wanted it that way.  In March my sister lovingly placed daffodils [a symbol of Wales] on our mother's grave on my behalf and I am grateful to her.

When you are no longer a daughter but are not a mother either, you begin to wonder where your place is at the table. I would add that not only does the non-mother not know where to sit, but she doesn't "own" the feast, having no brood to create it for.  She is never the main provider or creator of any feast, though she may be a helper. Many of you might envy this position, but the willing aunt, sister, cousin or friend at the table is not always happy.

If, like me, she is approaching her seventies and has not reproduced, she may look at her body and ask, "What was it all for?" as her body has reminded her what was expected of her every day of her life:  when her feminine attributes literally took shape, she learnt their power and their danger;  as her physical charms faded, she learnt what it was like to become invisible - a state not without its advantages - but did not have the respect due to a mother or grandmother to fill that void.  Women, said de Beauvoir, define themselves in relation to "the oher" and this is sadly still largely the case. The world likes to categorise us in terms of our relationship to others whilst continuing to judge us on our looks

So tied up is our psyche with the idea of motherhood that when my [adoptive] mother first showed symptoms of the dementia-related illness which would be her last, I, a successful career woman at that time, convinced myself that it was all my fault because I hadn't given her the joy of grandchildren. I felt that that had I been able to provide her with this "stimulus", everything would have been all right. I am also certain that there are childless women who abuse their own bodies because they consider them "useless", though I have yet to find any psychological research on this.

Today I want to think of all women who, for one reason or another, would have liked to have had children and did not, for this is a "loss" and rarely seen as such. I want to think of women like my natural mother, pressurised, so long ago,  by a judgemental society into giving up her child, all women who have suffered the loss of a child in any circumstances and, as it is the weekend and more migrant tragedies are probably occurring at sea as I write, of migrant mothers;  those whose children die as they cross the Mediterranean, those who have their children literally torn from them in slave camps in Libya, those who make the dangerous journey alone, in the hope of being able to send for their children later, and those who survive the journey, only to become separated from their children in the chaos. All are mothers, all have a mother's protective instinct and all deserve a place in our hearts this Mother's Day.

If you mised my posts about adoption and my reunion with my sister, you can find them here.  There are links to all my posts about migration in the Mediterranean on this page.