A Mother’s Day Reflection - by MK Rodgers

~ MK spoke at Mass on May 7th & 8th 2022~

When Father Oliver asked me to speak this weekend about mothering and Mother’s Day, I agreed, even though I had no idea what I would say. The experience of mothering and being mothered is different for every person. How can I speak to anyone else’s life? I can only speak to mine.

Always, I come back to these lines from Elizabeth Stone, an American writer and professor at Fordham University: “Making the decision to have a child - it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” 

When my kids were tiny, newly born, I felt this physically. I missed their feet kicking at my ribs, their hiccups, the slow stretching and repositioning under my heart. They were part of me, literally - and then they weren’t. They were these independent creatures, no longer with me every moment of my waking and sleeping, synced to my rhythms and soothed by the beat of my heart. My mother once found me quietly crying when my newborn daughter, my first child, slept in another room. Mom asked me what was wrong. I wailed “I miss her!” She pointed out that Laura was just a few feet from me, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that my heart was now separate. I was vulnerable in a way I never expected, because part of me was now outside of my body. This is motherhood, parenthood? Nothing had prepared me for this.

As my children got older, I had to cope with the fact that they would not always be in my sight, that I would not moderate their interactions with the world. They would go to preschool, to kindergarten, to grade school, high school, to dance classes and karate lessons and football practice and I would not be there. But my heart would be there, just walking around, subject to the wider world my children were exploring without me. They were building lives that I would not - could not - experience, except through their sharing with me at the end of their time away. This separation, as difficult as it was for me, was so very important for them to explore and experience, to find their places in the world, to sketch and build the foundations for the people they will become. But still, my heart. Each grade, each new school, they grew and grow, and they are formed by more people and experiences that are not available to me. But my heart walks with them.

My oldest left for college last fall. She decided to attend a school on the other side of the country, and while I could not be more proud of her and excited for her to take this tremendous step in her life, how could I be OK with my heart being that far away, where I couldn’t hear her rattling around in the kitchen as she got ready for school, where she couldn’t come into my room in the middle of the night with teenage worries, where I would not be part of her day-to-day life? I had to - have to - trust that my heart is safe with her. I have to trust that she, and her brothers, know that they are my heart, and that everything that happens to them matters to me in the most fundamental way, and that no matter where they go, I am with them. They are my heart, walking around in the world.

Being a mother isn’t about being perfect. It’s about being present. It’s about grace and failure and trying again and recognizing our own humanity as we work to raise human beings who will do more, know more, and see more than we ever will. For many, Mother’s Day is not easy - we have complicated relationships with mothering and parenting, and it is important to recognize that as we mark this day. I think about the Blessed Mother, who kept so many things in her heart, who watched Jesus - her child, fully human as well as fully God, her heart - grow into a man who had triumphs beyond her imagining, but who suffered and died so awfully, and how when he was taken down from the cross and laid in her arms, how that was her heart, broken and bloodied, and how, even then, she had to trust and know that there was more to come, that her heart would be healed and resurrected, not just for her, but for all of humanity. When it’s hard to have my heart walking around outside my body, I think of Mary - usually saying three Hail Marys, as my own mother taught me to do any time I need to pause and gather myself - and I do my best to draw strength and faith from her example. For all mothers and all those who fill a mother role, I wish a peaceful and blessed Mother’s Day, with full hearts and great love.