I Mother - We All Need Mothering

Mothering Sunday is celebrated today in the UK. There are some important points to note about this tradition - mainly that it's not, in its origins, all about being, or having, a mother, even if that has become its focus more recently. 

On Mothering Sunday, in the 16th century, Christians visited their mother church - their spiritual home. This was the church in which they were baptised. For me, this would be All Souls, Langham Place, London.

The connections between Mothering Sunday and mothers became clearer in the 1910s and '20s when (as Wikipedia puts it) Constance Adelaide Smith (not a mother herself) 'reinvigorated' Mothering Sunday in the British Isles, having heard of the way Mother's Day was introduced to celebrate the role of mothers in the USA. Rather than adopting a new festival, Smith amalgamated aspects of Mother's Day with Mothering Sunday and promoted it in her published works. Having stuck with Mothering Sunday, it means the day we celebrate motherhood isn't fixed - it moves with the ecclesiastical calendar: is always on the fourth Sunday in lent, mid-way between Ash Wednesday and Easter. 

Ahh Lent! The time for extra self-discipline. But even the church recognises we all need a break sometimes. So the first aspect of a traditional Mothering Sunday is that it is a legitimate break from fasting. I note this for my friend, who has birthday cake to finish up, and for my son, with whom I hope to do some baking later on. 

The second aspect of a traditional Mothering Sunday is that you don't have to be a mother, or to have a surviving mother, to mark it. We aren't told this - instead we're told that if we are bereaved or childless we can opt out of the flurry of marketing emails selling us Mother's Day merchandise. Big deal.

Many of us no longer have a mother church, or a mother place of worship from any religion. My parents left the west end of London when I was 6 months old, so my emotional connection with it as a place is close to none. I've needed to find a new way of homecoming, or mothering, being mothered. The Macmillan dictionary definition of mothering helps - it says that mothering is to treat someone with care and kindness as though they were a small child. 

According to this definition we can all mother and be mothered today - in fact, it's essential human behaviour, and transcends biological sex, gendered expectations, labels, and doing the washing up. We can all be 'as though' small children, especially now in this pandemic when we are  experiencing huge losses, so tired, downhearted, in a strop, miserable, over-wrought, anxious ... 

Sometimes, I forget to mother myself. I get lax about bedtime, about reading to myself, about baking. Sometimes, I forget how much we all need mothering.

Today, I am lucky enough to be able to lie around and read a book, then later, maybe I'll get my crayons out and draw myself a card. I'll bake with my son as part of a celebration not so much of motherhood, but of the human capacity to show care and kindness at a time when we all need to be, from time to time, given flowers, fed cake, encouraged to splash in puddles, hugged, listened to without judgement, reminded to lie down and rest, pretending to be a dozing cat: treated as if we were small children. 

Photograph © Mike Powell