Mothers' Gifts

         While making the bed this morning, a memory from a long ago Mothers Day flashed through my mind. We were still living in Buffalo, on Argyle Avenue, and Sarah was about a year old. Off and on for quite a few Sundays, we had been attending the Unitarian Church – I think the one in Amherst. We were there on a Mothers Day Sunday, and when folks got up one at a time to give announcements or concerns, a man stood who I recognized as one of the ushers/greeters, someone involved in the church. He gave a Happy Mothers Day message to the Moms in attendance and then said that his gift to his wife on that Mothers Day was that she did not have to go to church with him! She got to stay home!

         This, in my mind, was funny. And he may have gotten the irony – he enjoyed going to church, but his wife? Not so much. He liked being a cog in the church mechanisms, and she was mostly only there to support him. So it made perfect sense to give her the gift of staying home on Mothers Day instead of the usual weekly burden of accompanying her husband to church. But to announce it during the service as if everyone would understand that for some, going to church was a chore?

         I get it, though. I like to tell the story of my Dad taking his three kids to church every Sunday, Catholic mass, while Mom stayed home. Her explanation at the time, and for anyone who asked us kids about it, was that Mom was not Catholic, but rather Episcopalian. And one time Mom told me she did not go to the Episcopalian church either because in the earlier years of her marriage, she did go to church but people started asking her where her kids were – so she stopped going. But truth be told, I’m sure Mom very much enjoyed that hour by herself every Sunday, closer to two hours, actually. And at the risk of breaking the first commandment, being home alone can be one's religion.

Amanda, Sarah, me, and my Mom, Mary Des Soye

         Here is a picture that came up as a memory on Facebook today – it is one Amanda originally posted in 2009 and taken the day of her college graduation. Amanda, Sarah, me, and my Mom, Mary Louise Junkin Des Soye. Today that picture represents three generations of mothers – she who bore me, and two who I had the blessed honor of boring, and that’s me, the goofy one second from the right.

         To all mothers out there: may you celebrate or not, go to church or not, enjoy the solitude or the multitude, and may you for sure know that you are truly blessed!

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