Mother's Day Presence

I don't know what Mother's Day represents in Scotland or England, but here in America the holiday began as a peace movement, which tickles me no end. I began a peace movement here in our small town in the early eighties called Willits Working For Peace and we still stand every Friday night in front of our hospital holding candles when it's dark and hands when it's summer. We have silk screened banners that say Peace in different languages and all but the english one are in tatters. It's time to make new ones. We have a main banner that lists the troop deaths of both sides and it is a clarion for peace. Here is what I paraphrased from Google about Mother's Day

The earliest activity for Mother's Day was the meeting of mothers whose sons had died in the Civil War. There were several celebrations in 1870 and 1880, but none achieved resonance beyond the local level. In 1868 Ann Jarvis created a committee to establish a "Mother's Friendship Day" whose purpose "was to re-unite families that had been divided during the Civil War" and she wanted to extend it into an annual memorial for mothers, but she died in 1905 before she saw her dream realized. Her daughter Anna Marie Jarvis, following the death of her mother on May 9, 1905, with the help of a Philadelphia merchant called John Wanamaker began making a celebration for peace coupled with honoring mothers at the time. A small service was held May 12 1907. Anna Marie campaigned for Mother's day to become a national day and later, am international holiday.

Julia Ward Howe made a day of celebration called Mother's Day for Peace in 1872. I feel like I've belonged to a group of women pushing for peace for a long time. I first became aware of a peace movement when I was fifteen in 1972. The Viet Nam conflict would end very soon and as young people, my friends and I became aware of the troubles in Bangladesh, in Ireland, wanting to do something to make these wars, conflicts, killing and starving of people go away. I became a member of a peace group and while I left Southern California soon after graduating high school early for Berkeley, I stayed dedicated to working for peace and moving to Berkeley when I was eighteen made that easier where there were many dedicated groups already.

I didn't know the connection between peace groups and mother's day until a few years ago. I had raised my sons with the belief that mother's day was just a hallmark greeting card holiday. If I had known then, when they were young that it was really part of the peace movement, I would have had more opportunity to share my peace beliefs with them and train them to think "Peace" instead of, "a day to buy mother a present ". Also, when they were young neither son understood
why I occasionally practiced civil disobedience and went to jail for my beliefs. I would have had a better chance to talk to them if I had had the knowledge to tie mother's day in with demonstrating for peace. Nils has created his own small group of 20 something and high school students to demonstrate in Willits while the adults stand in front of the hospital with our candles and peace banners.

For mother's day this year, Nils came over and worked on my blog writing down complete instructions on how to put photographs on posts. I only hope this techno-moron can follow his directions. He and his lady came over in the late afternoon as I stood watering the vegetable greens garden and we had a lovely talk about all that I just wrote about. Earlier in the afternoon my daughter-in-law came over with a miniature rose plant. If any of you have read Rumer Godden books, receiving this small rose is reminiscent of her book "An Episode of Sparrows" which I first read when I was eleven and now, having my own copy, have read over and over. Kate is such a loving young woman and doesn't just give a gift she wants to give, but something she knows the receiver would want. And she's uncanny in her choices. My day was wonderful beginning with church and ending with mucking in the garden when everyone went home.
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I tried after Nils left to put a photo of my garden to go with this post, and of course it wouldn't work even though i followed all the instructions he wrote down. sigh...