This got me thinking about the mothers in my life, and in my lineage. The furthest back I remember is my grandmother, after whom I was named. She came to this country from Ireland in the 19th century, and married my grandfather who came over from Germany when he was two years old. Together they created a life for themselves and raised four daughters.
The eldest was my mother, who came of age in the flapper era and married my father, a Swedish immigrant. Together they had two boys in addition to me.
I came of age in the 1950’s, married in the ‘60s and birthed a boy and a girl in the 70’s. The girl married in this new century, the 21st, and has also birthed two children, a boy and a girl.
So I see five generations of women in my personal history, four of them mothers and one, now a five-year old, a possible future mother.
As Ernest Holmes says, We have all emerged from that One Whose Being is ever present and Whose Life, robed in numberless forms, manifest throughout all Creation. All of us, different personalities, are propelled by the cosmic Urge to bring us into being, into perfect manifestation.
I looked for commonalities in these different family feminine life experiences Different times, different places. Three generations enjoyed long, stable marriages. My grandparents, parents and myself were married some 40 years, with no divorce or early widowhood. The men in the families did not experience the killing fields of wartime military,
My great grandfather was in the German military under Bismarck, and --the story goes -- one night he and some buddies drank too much beer and cut down the trees in front of the Kaiser’s palace. I assume they used their swords. In any case, that prompted a swift trip out of the country to America, followed by their wives, children, feather beds, pots and pans.
My grandfather did not serve in World War I, avoided the flu pandemic, and made it through the depression with a solid job as a postman. My own father was a bit old for World War II, but managed a toy factory converted to producing munitions for the war effort.
My own husband, Larry, served stateside in the army in the 50’s.
I might have been raised by a single mother, if my father had died as expected from a deadly pneumonia. But my mother wore out her rosary praying for his recovery, and just in time, a totally new sulfa drug saved his life.
So aside from that near miss, and the late life illnesses of transition, my ancestors as well as my own family have been blessed with good health. I survived a bout with breast cancer in my fifties, and enjoy grandmama status today.
One recurring theme through my family history is education. For my grandmother. a high school diploma was enough to become a school teacher. My mother, with two years of Normal school, was a grade school teacher before marriage and insisted we children all go to college. My two brothers and myself earned masters’ degrees. I married a college professor, have done a bit of college teaching myself, and my own children have advanced degrees...my son a doctorate and my daughter a master's degree. Education is highly valued in their families as well.
So as I look back at the generations of mothers before and after me, I realize we have manifested very positive life experiences. I am humbled, amazed and thankful that I am privileged to be a link in this chain of motherhood...this tangle of love, caring, wisdom, guidance, hard work and more created from the divine urges of the Cosmos.
As the poet Rajneesh has said:
“The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new.”
And so it is, on this Mother’s Day, May 11, 2014.
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