San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Honoring the constancy of love from all of our mothers
Growing up, the footsteps most frequently heard in my neighborhood were the fastmoving, stop-go-stop-rubbersoles-squeaking-on-asphalt sound of boys playing touch football in the street.
Never, in those long-ago games, did we hear the hardsoles-clicking-against-concrete footsteps of fathers walking down the sidewalk to watch us play or join us in the games. Never.
When night fell, the voices that rolled out into the darkness to summon us home were those of our mothers. Rare was the evening when a man’s voice beckoned his son because in the houses to which we retreated, with a couple of exceptions, there were no fathers, either because of divorce, desertion or death.
Some of the absent fathers, like mine who lived and worked in different cities, were good men, but absent nonetheless.
The hands that made our meals, nursed our wounds, spanked our behinds and led our reluctant souls to church were those of our mothers. Their voices were the ones cheering us on with clapping hands at sporting events, sometimes getting thrown out of the baseball complex for protesting an umpire’s call a little too loudly.
Father’s Day wasn’t a big deal in our neighborhood, but every day was Mother’s Day because it was our mothers who were always there for us, sustaining and enriching the lives they’d given.
On this day when we celebrate mothers, the greatest gift we can give to those still living, and to honor those who live in memory, is the commitment to take better care of their children — meaning, to take better care of each other and this planet.
Women endure pain giving birth to their children, and then endure more pain watching the cruelty, indifference and injustice inflicted on those children.
In Rudolfo Anaya’s novel “Albuquerque,” the boy Abrán asks his mother about La Llorona, the mythical crying woman.
“We, the mothers of the world, are the crying women because we cry when our children suffer,” answers his mother. “Every woman is a Llorona.”
Few things are as moving and potent as a mother’s tears. In the world today, as it has been since the first breath drawn by woman and man, legion are the demons that make children suffer. The children can be ages 2 or 5 or 14, 27 or 43, but there is always war, poverty, hatred, natural disaster or personal hardship that cause suffering and unleash a mother’s tears. The good mothers — including women who’ve never given birth to children of their own — cry not only for their own children, the ones they brought into the world, but for the children of other mothers.
Marvin Gaye spoke to this timeless empathy and pain in the first words of the title song of his classic 1971 album, “What’s Going On,” when he sang, “Mother, mother, there’s too many of you crying.”
May 21 marks the 50th anniversary of the release of that album. Four days later, May 25, will be the first anniversary of the most anguished invoking of a mother ever recorded when a dying George Floyd cried out, “Mama! Mama!”
Marvin’s was a plea for love and understanding. George’s was a cry for help and mercy.
We are brothers and sisters birthed by different mothers but sharing the same birthright to be fully embraced in our humanity. Each of us has the capacity to give as well as receive love, understanding, help and mercy.
Most of us are blessed to have been shaped by a mother’s love that is unconditional, given generously, expects nothing in return and forgiving. It’s the kind of love that, even if we try to emulate and fail, forces us to shed some of our hatred and pettiness.
But it’s a love we must try to emulate if we’re to be better, do better by each other and be more attentive to each other’s needs. We’re here by way of women. We’ll survive through the love of women.
Happy Mother’s Day to all you mothers, including those who’ve mothered children not your own. Some of you carried us for nine months. We’ve carried your voices in our heads and followed your footsteps through our hearts for years.