In honour of mothers

Last week was mothers’ day and although different churches have different days for it unlike other countries where it is celebrated across board on one day, I still believe that the very special day set aside for mothers by the church is a good way to reward women for their tenacity and sacrifice to their families and their nations.

March is generally the month for women, what with March 8 declared each year as the International women’s day. This year’s theme “Be Bold for Change” as all other years saw women striving to drive change together with enduring purpose, relentlessness and creative execution. Be bold is so timely in the face of so many daunting challenges worldwide. What this says is that if it’s a change for the better “fear not”. Wake up and smell the coffee.

Mothers continue to amaze me all over the world. The very burden of socialisation rests on the mother. It is amazing how many female headed households are recorded worldwide. Amongst immigrants many women have crossed dangerous territories to take their children to a better life, some never making it to the end of the journey. In many parts of the world women are heading households because their husbands go long distances for work and come home from time to time or they are single mums or widowed.

How many mothers may eat the crumbs or nothing at all after sharing what is available to their family? How many mothers have sold their property, jewelleries or their life savings to see their children through school? How many mothers have forgiven their children even when they try to hurt them? The story of a mother’s sacrifice is impossible to tell in a brief piece as this. Everyone has a story about their mums that can bring us all to tears.

In war situations, mothers and children are the most vulnerable; yet laws are made across the world that constantly disenfranchises women. Let us look at war situations again. Many years ago, I read a Red Cross report that showed men who had been tortured during a war situation. They had scars on their backs, some were amputees, and some had bullet holes on their palms. It was really a sad story to read but the Red Cross official who wrote this article kept us all in suspense when she said the men and women were kept in different rooms and she had just seen the men all scarred. She found the women more unsettling; all quiet and hurdled together. They had just been rescued from the war zones and then she began to speak to them one after the other.

While they were not scarred physically, every single woman in the room had been damaged psychologically, had been raped many times over, over many days by different persons until the days ran into nights and they could no longer keep count. Most of them were mothers, all raped in front of their children. Multiple damage! Some of them were pregnant for the enemy and were contemplating suicide.

Mothers everywhere are to be saluted for their courage: In the face of unspeakable things, the sorrow and darkness of night, the pain of a damaged soul, the child that was never yours but belongs to you, the rapist’s son, a reminder of all things tragic.

Mothers remain the last bastion of civilisation. They hold the key to our collective socialisation.

It is really the mothers that have the role under very difficult circumstances for keeping the family together. In spite of a wayward husband, recalcitrant children, the biting economy and her constant need to feed the world with the few grains that she might have saved, mothers are God’s representatives on earth. Selfless, giving, kind, warm and permanently concerned.

The love of a mother is eternal. I understand this because my late mum the ethereal Mrs. Josephine Amodu would worry in eight different places and the worry is all different according to every person’s issue. As a mum myself I understand how you can give up everything because of your children.

Today I salute all the single mums in the world who without support are creatively bringing up their children. I salute widows -those groups of women who have lost their support system, their friends, their husbands. I salute grandmothers, those women you want to live with forever because they spoil us so silly. I salute mother-in-laws, especially those who have take time to bring up their boys to become decent young men. The other sets of mother-in-laws who we all know are conniving and difficult and wished that another girl had married their sons; I salute them still, in spite of themselves because they gave birth to the husbands.

I salute all mothers worldwide going through this and going through that and still standing strong for their families.

Happy mothers’ day!

Eugenia Abu