Who's Your Mama?

In honor of Mother's Day, Beacon Broadside solicited different perspectives on the holiday. Today's post is from Harlyn Aizley. Aizley edited Confessions of the Other Mother: Nonbiological Lesbian Moms Tell All!  and is the author of Buying Dad: One Woman's Search for the Perfect Sperm Donor. (Cross-posted at her personal blog.)

You'd think Mother's Day among lesbian moms would be an awesome, Doublemint occasion – double your pleasure, double your fun. After all, Mother's Day is not even a Judeo-Christian/Hallmark creation. It actually was birthed in the US some 150 years ago by Appalachian mom Ann Jarvis, who wanted to raise awareness of the poor health conditions in her community. She called it "Mother's Work Day." So for those vernal equinox lesbians more inclined to celebrate the cycles of the moon than the Old or New Testament, Mother's Day is perfect.  It's pro-mom, pro-woman, pro-justice.

Then why the angst?  Why does this lesbian mom secretly dread Mother's Day?  Why do I sadden rather than rejoice when approaching this women fest (an event even bigger and more far-reaching than the Michigan's Women's Festival?)

Because in addition to amplifying the joy, Mother's Day in two-mom households also can shed light on just how complicated it is to share the role of "mother."

Never mind who gets to be called "mom", who gets to sleep in?

Who takes care of dinner and makes a cake?

Who gets the card made from glue and glitter in kindergarten?

A Global Perspective on Mother’s Day

In honor of Mother's Day, Beacon Broadside will feature a handful of posts on the holiday. Today, Sarah LeVine shares her experiences of mother's days around the world. LeVine grew up in England; she was educated at Oxford, the University of Chicago, and Harvard, where she received her Ph.D. and is now an associate in the department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies. Her most recent book, with David Gellner, is Rebuilding Buddhism, and a collection of stories, The Saint of Kathmandu and Other Tales of the Sacred in Distant Lands, is forthcoming from Beacon Press. 

When I came to the US from England in the 1960s, I suffered a good deal from culture shock. In the first place, in contrast with my British undergraduate classmates who rarely mentioned their parents, my Freud-indoctrinated American graduate school classmates, despite being older and, one might have assumed, already well out of the nest, were obsessed with theirs, especially with their mothers. Trading tales of psychological abuse was a favorite pastime. But for all this tension and ambivalence, they still celebrated Mother's Day. In England at that time we had Mothering Sunday on the fourth Sunday of Lent, an Anglican Church festival that was generally ignored. The four per cent of the population who went to church on that particular late winter Sunday thanked God for the care and attention they'd received from their mothers, who were only marginally involved in this thanksgiving. In contrast, Mother's Day in America was a federally-sanctified celebration, a deification of the internalized torturer/seductress, which even in the sixties was poised to out-strip the commercial excesses of Christmas.

I was astounded by the commotion. But then I married an American and had American children who, soon after they could toddle, were deifying me on the second Sunday in May. Almost before I knew it I was receiving cards (handmade in daycare center) and being pressed to stay in bed long after the hour when I was usually out jogging so that, with their father's help, my children could bring my breakfast on a tray.

Rather to my surprise I began to look forward to the Mother's Day commotion.

Link Roundup

I was on a semi-vacation last week, so this week's link roundup is a bit larger than normal. Enjoy!

Howard Zinn is adding to his People's History of the United States with a new graphic novel, A People's History of the American Empire. Read about it at Tom Dispatch, and check out this Viggo Mortensen-narrated clip featuring Mike Konopacki's artwork and Zinn's words. 

Fantastic review of Eboo Patel's Acts of Faith at Beliefnet. And don't miss Patel's excellent post on pluralism vs. diversity over at OnFaith.

...[I]t’s not about whether diversity is good or bad. Diversity is a fact, and in America it's not going away. The question is how to best engage the fact of diversity in a way that builds social capital and increases civic engagement. And when the pluralists don't engage diversity by building positive social bonds, then we leave a vacuum that is often filled by extremists or bigots.

In light of the recent Obama/Wright controversy (read Chris Bracey's take at BlackProf), Terri Gross talked with James Cone, author of Risks of Faith: The Emergence of a Black Theology of Liberation, 1968-1998, about Black Liberation Theology. Also listen to the other interview from that show, with Rev. Dwight Hopkins, for a better understanding of the context Rev. Wright's comments were ripped from.

Kai Wright is in the American Prospect on starting over in AIDS research and in the Dallas Morning News about the danger of the high rate of teen STDs.

Penny Coleman attended the Winter Soldiers' conference, and her thoughtful analysis is appearing on Alternet. Be sure to check out her article about Stop/Loss: "Pentagon Holds Thousands of Americans 'Prisoners of War'."

Rabbi Arthur Waskow urges Jews and others to observe a green Passover.

Kevin Jennings, author of Mama's Boy, Preacher's Son, is a hockey fan. And he doesn't appreciate the homophobic atmosphere at Rangers games.

 

Single at the Holidays: Not Alone, but a Different Kind of Togetherness

by Kay Trimberger

Singles during the Thanksgiving and Christmas/Hanukkah seasons—quintessential family holidays in the U.S.—are stereotyped as lonely, isolated and pathetic. While popular entertainment is now as likely to depict family conflict as well as joy during the holidays, we have noticeably fewer images for singles.

Contrary to stereotypes, my study of long-term, middle-aged single women, found little holiday loneliness and angst. Many of these baby boom single women have large families. They range from Wynona, a divorced single mother in her fifties with four grown children and seven grandchildren to ever-single Emily, in her late thirties with no children of her own, but with meaningful ties to her five siblings and their children.

For other single women with fewer family members—or family who live far away—holiday tension focuses on building new traditions with friends in a culture where friendship is more fluid and less valued than family relationships. I discovered that a network of supportive friends is one of the most important factors that lead to satisfaction with single life. But, at the holidays, family obligations still trump any commitment to friends. Rather than being isolated, single women often face conflicts that are both similar to and different from those in family-based holidays. My own experience is a good example.

‘Eid

by Laila Halaby

Small or large.

Here or there.

That is ‘Eid.

When ‘Eid (either of them—‘Eid al Fitr follows Ramadan and ‘Eid al Adha will be in December) is there, it is a celebration that involves visiting and eating and happiness. Stuffed cabbage and grape leaves, tender lamb, mountains of rice, all consumed in houses at their cleanest, homes whose occupants have pushed aside their troubles for a few days.

When ‘Eid is here, it is all about the telephone and the children getting excited for their gifts, new clothes, and more good food.