Dreams of Our Mothers

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Carol Forsloff --  Today's mothers are unique, as "the hand that rocks the cradle" may be difficult to identify anymore with the new families struggling to decide who and what mother is.

The classic image in "Leave It to Beaver" is not the American family of today.  Today's mother is apt to work outside the home and have little time to have all the neighborhood kids over for the day.  The new world of busy mothers means children are more and more requiring technology to be tethered to the family, as opposed to the dinner hour when everyone gathers around the table to chat about the day.

In La Grande, Oregon and other small towns like Natchitoches, Louisiana one can still find mothers doing the same things they used to but paying for it with their lives.  Mothers now die like fathers do on the open roads of life and have the tensions of the work world.  But a small town means families that have remained in the town remain close emotionally as well.  Yet that is changing as well.  Emotional or physical estrangement from many causes has created distances far greater than yesterday's mother found.  What's worse is the question:  Who is the mother?

These days mothers are stepmothers, big sisters, auntie or the neighbor next door or even the Facebook mom who nurtures everyone.

So what are the dreams of the mothers today, as in the past the responsibility was to care carefully, play with the child and provide guidance for major life directions.  Today's mothers dreams of having the time to do that and hoping that, despite a unique relationship that may not be tied to a birth of a child,  they will be identified with motherhood in the same way.

Today we will attend a funeral of a stepmother with a family wrenched apart by clashes with the deceased woman's new boyfriend and the step-family, as the children's father had been married twice.  So the children have had to make shifts in their lives to accommodate new relationships after a divorce or death.  The natural mother of the adult children is seldom mentioned in the mix, as the grown children continue to identify relationships.  And the answer to "who is the mother" becomes complicated.

For all those women who have children, have cared for the children of others, who watch over children in the work world or who take the time the time for a little mothering on a street corner of a child's life, congratulations, as new life has been poetically identified as not just the physical but spiritual renewal.  Congratulations to all those who offer that kind of relationship and to all mothers who have dreams of a better world for all of us.

On Mothers Day, a child of mine: Finding new ways to love after loss

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by Carol Forsloff - Mother's Day is a time to celebrate mothers all over the world.  In the United States families honor mothers with dinners out, candy, bouquets of flowers and other wonderful things, but what happens to the nurturing women who never had children or lost the ones they had?

For one thing, those women who give in the service of children, of which there are many, many of these wonderful folk, need to be recognized just as we recognize our mothers.  So many women who wanted children may never have had them, while others may have lost children; and still others may never have married or had children for a variety of reasons.  But there are teachers, childcare workers, women who nurture and guide and take the time to love children not their own.  These too are women to honor.

I am fortunate to have "borrowed" a number of children, now adults, over the years to compensate for the ones lost.  A number of these young adults have mothers of their own, but older women sometimes fill a niche here and there that may fit just right for them.  A single mother can't be all things to all people, so these niches are the places other women fill.  They are there to love and not to take away from the mother who gave birth or raised a child but supplement that love in special ways.  Each one is a "child of mine."

There are also children in need in every part of the world, helpless children, children with disabilities, children who are "nobody's child" because there is no one to care or to support their needs or their families are too poor to provide for them.  There are many social service agencies of many different types who offer foster care programs that allow "mothers" to give in wonderful ways to one of these needy children.

Mothers Day is a time to honor giving itself, loving that comes in ways that nourish the very roots of our being; and it is that we all must hold up in our daily lives, and on Mothers Day, to declare the value of that so that others do the same.