Mothering Sunday

Mothering Sunday, one of the most depressing Sundays in the year for some of us. Of course it is in fact the day to honour Maria, the mother of Jesus, and the miracle of birth and life. But is also rubs in that motherhood is the thing we women are made for, and for those of us who are childless it is a very painful day. They may, like me, feel they have missed their vocation. They may or may not be married, they may or may not have a career, but nothing compensates for the lack of children. Unless of course a woman has deliberately made the choice to remain childless. No children means no grandchildren either, no weddings, no heartbreak. We may have dreamt about having a large family, have had fantasies about the talents of our unborn children, hoped they might like the things we ourselves love. We can't point out to them the things we appreciate most in life, show them the beauty of nature, the joy of music and poetry. We won't experience the thrill of their first hesitant efforts to read, we won't see their excitement when they discover the world of books. We can't pass on through the generations the things we value most, our faith, our beliefs. With us, our ideas die, we die.  Mothering Sunday rubs it in, opens wounds which heal very slowly anyway, if at all.

 Last October my father told us that he wanted to celebrate his 98^th birthday with all his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, 25 of the latter. He said that he wanted to see the offspring he had produced, a clan, a large family of which he and my mother were the source, give or take some influx from strangers. He rejoiced in this clan, this large group of people, his own people, and was proud of us and of what he had in a way produced, what he had started.  His birthday was a very happy and joyful occasion, but I felt terribly lonely and empty. No children, no grandchildren. Who would be interested in my possessions, my books, the book I had written? In the music I love, the pictures I have taken, the books I have collected? It is not a lonely life, for I share it with friends, but not with relations. On mothering Sunday Hannah is mentioned as well, the woman who also felt absolutely inferior because she was childless. She was one of the wives of Elkanah and although her husband loved her more than his other wife Peninnah, Hannah was not honoured as much as Peninnah because she had not given her husband a child. Her fervent prayers in the temple were answered and she gave birth to Samuel whose life she dedicated to the service of God. Nowadays feminists will laugh at me. Isn't a career far more important than children? Till the alarm of their biological clock goes off. In church this past Sunday children offered their mothers a small bunch of bright yellow daffodils, kissing them and saying they love them. Fortunately after that ritual all the women in church were given flowers, all potential mums. So I was not left empty handed, just empty inside.