Maybe Mother’s Day Should

Also be Called ‘Hero’s Day’

By Tom Anselm

There are two absolutes that all humans have in common: we each are here on God’s Green Earth because we all have both a father and a mother. So far, that doesn’t look like that’s going to change any time soon. And while it takes two to tango, they say, the key element in this creation is the mamma.

Mainly because she was our first “womb with a view,” the one of which we never had to straighten up or put away our toys. And for that, we should be eternally grateful, as we celebrate that miraculous woman this weekend, the one who carried us inside her for usually 9 months and who carries us still, deep in her heart.

Mama, Mommy, Mom, Mother, Grandma. So many of these in my life and in Jill’s were awesome. Like my own, Evelyn, and her mom, Marie, and my dad’s, Katherine. Jillie comes from her mom Joan, and grandmother’s Adele, and Marie. We can claim a long line of Superstar Momma’s. I see this legacy of excellence continuing with my dear wife, with her sisters, sisters-in-law, and with our own daughters. It is a remarkable and fascinating sight to behold.

It has never been easy to be a mother. In generations past, women died during childbirth. We kind of take the gestation period and actual birth for granted these days, expecting everything to just roll along and result in a perfect child-arrival. Not true, but certainly much better than even a mere hundred years ago.

I have come to consider every birth a miracle. I was able to witness all six of our grands entrances, a bystander of course in the process. And then there was Jill. She who endured the early nausea, suffered the labor, felt the exhaustion, and was fittingly the first to cradle the newcomers. And came

back strong, every time. By the Grace of the Good Lord. Like I said, she carried the goonies from conception to delivery, and carries them still, in her heart. Even into adulthood, no matter what they may do or say. Unconditionally.

Now, over the generations, mom’s roles have changed. Our mother’s were considered ‘housewives’ when that was an honorable moniker and not a term of snide derision. But two of our grandmother’s, Adele and Marie, they lost husbands early on, and by necessity, became working moms. So many mothers in today’s world have taken this route, many by choice, reflecting the myriad opportunities for women in the last 50 years.

Still many more others follow that plan due to need. Schools are more expensive, homes, cars, heck, even food. Some people are raising grandkids, not expectedly, in their senior years. Others are laboring at home and at work, due to being single. To paraphrase Terrence Mann in Field of Dreams, “things have changed, Ray… things have most definitely changed.”

The Lovely Jill has traveled both paths, and admirably so. For some time early on, when our littles were just that, she was mom-at-home, with an occasional part-time gig. We needed the dinero, but they needed mommy more. Then came a time when she was “38 years old, working full time and pregnant with her sixth kid.”

It was not an easy time for her.

So therefore, consider this. The word “hero” contains the word “her” inside it.

As our children and, yay, grandchildren can fully testify, she is truly a hero.

Happy Mother’s Day to all mama-mom-mommy-mother-grandma’s.

Happy Hero’s Day to you.

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