My mother’s day was one of mixed emotion. I had plans to write a long post about the invaluable work of mothers in this world, and I was going to write a couple of letters in support of working mothers. But as much as i tried, i just wasn’t able to write. You see, this mother woke up to find one my babies dead. Trombone, the dwarf hampster to the right, was found curled up in his food bowl. When i went to wake him up and put him in a warmer spot, i found that he wasn’t just sleeping.
I spent awhile yesterday writing a eulogy for Trombone, but i’ve decided not to print it. Instead, i will just say that i’ll miss him and that i am thankful to have had him in my life.
I do still want to say something about mothers, though. I spent a lot of time yesterday thinking about what motherhood means. I talked to my own mother and to one of my best friends (who is a new mother) and i came to realize that motherhood is not a product, its a process. Mothers are not neatly packaged. Their role does not end when a meal is cooked or when the laundry is done. Those acts, the acts that the government Mother’s Day tells us we should be thankful for, are not what make a mother a mother. Moms are educators, organizers, rabble-rousers, breadwinners, and so much more. The friend i mentioned above is a community organizer in the US Southwest. She told me about going back to work and carrying E, the baby, along with her as she went door-to-door talking to people in the community. I talked on the phone with my mom about a variety of topics, one of which was the socialization of violence. These aren’t extraordinary moms. Sure, they are both beautiful, passionate, and dedicated moms, but they are the epitome of motherhood. They aren’t just caretakers, they are actively involved in the process of mothering. They are there every day to support, talk with, cry with, laugh with, and just be with their children.
I was recently re-reading the book Men’s Work by Paul Kivel. In the book, Kivel talks about how you don’t have to have biologically fathered a child to be a father. You don’t even have to adopt a child to be a father. He stated that all men are fathers at different points in their lives. He explained that we must not only recognize the many ways that we are fathers to others, but also in what ways we are acting as father. He was essentially arguing that we need to be actively and critically involved in that process of fathering.
As a genderQueer, and one who hopes to adopt one day, i often think about motherhood and fatherhood and what their respectively gendered roles mean. And there is no shortage of people who find out that i want to adopt and immediately proceed to ask “well, will you let your child call you mother or father?” (Asked as if they have just thrown you the ultimate question to knock you off of the genderQueer fence.) Partly because of my lack of real life model for positive fatherhood, i tend to identify more as a mother to the animals in my life. But that is not merely because i feed, clean, and otherwise care for them. No. I take an active role in their lives. Sure, there’s not a whole lot i can do as far as education, but i sure do some rabble-rousing and organizing.
The animals in my life provide an unmeasurable amount of inspiration in my life. When i think of their stories and look at them, i know that my role as a mother cannot simply stop after feeding time. Lets look at Trombone. Trombone came into my life last year. I was at a friend’s house when we received a call explaining that Trombone was in the back of a pet store awaiting his sentance of death by freezer and wondering if either of us would care for him if he were to escape from prison. Any animal lib kid is well-aware of what we call vegan guilt. Well, of course we said yes (even though there were already a dozen animals between the two houses). And thus began Trombone’s life as a liberated political prisoner.
His story is nothing unique. Pet shops kill countless kittens, puppies, mice, rats, ferrets, bunnies, hampsters, guinea pigs, birds and other animals every day. Most either burn them alive in an incinerator or (more common) stick them in a freezer alive. With puppies, kittens, and sometimes other animals, they don’t do the dirty work themselves. They send them back to the breeder from wence they came (usually because they’ve passed the ’sellable’ age of eight weeks) and it is there that they are killed. If not killed, then sold to a rendering plant where they are killed and turned into food for dogs, cats, cows, pigs, etc. As a mother, i cannot stand by knowing what is going on in the world and do nothing. So i fight against puppy mills, breeders, pet stores that sell animals, rendering plants, and so on.
Tom the Turtle is another animal that lives with me. She is a red-earred slider who was found by a friend about 14 years ago in a bucket of chemicals. Tom’s eyes were burned out of her head and she must now be hand-fed twice a day. How can i sit on my ass while corporations are polluting our world with toxic substances that disable and kill our children everyday?
And the last one i’ll mention is Osil. I try not to take favorites, but i admit, she is my most loved. She has gotten me through some tough times. Osil is a dog. I found her in a ditch over two years ago. She was a four-week-old puppy covered in mud and yelling at a couple of turkeys. I found her early one morning while sitting outside the school in Oventic, Chiapas, Mexico - Autonomous Zapatista Territory. Who we assume is her sister was found a few days before. We were asked to take them. If we did not, they would have died. Not that they Tzotzil people of Oventic are ruthless people, quite the contrary. But they are poor. In fact, some of the poorest people in Mexico. Through the acts of the Zapatistas and their collective organizing, they have done incredibly inspiring things over the past twelve years - started an autonomous school system based on popular education models, a wimmin’s art collective, an organic seed bank, collective farms, a boot company, and more. But economically speaking, they are still among the poorest of the poor. Most cannot afford to feed themselves, let alone another animal. The few dogs they do have in Oventic are large dogs used for protection against invading military and paramilitary forces (however, i must say they aren’t very good at training ruthless guard dogs. The extent to the protective services that i witnessed was that one of them pee’d on my backpack upon my arrival. And then licked my hand. As if to say, “That’s for the colonization. And that’s for the solidarity.” Besides, i never once saw so much as a fence or a chain for these dogs. Not that i’m complaining. My understanding is that the caretakers recognize enslavement as enslavement.) Osil reminds me on a daily basis of the necessary and beautiful struggle of the Zapatistas. The people of Oventic referred to them as “zapatista puppies”. Can i sit idly by knowing that the people of Osil’s homeland are being massacred, starved, beaten, and imprisoned? No. I take the words of Subcommandante Marcos to heart, “we are all zapatistas.”
So this Mother’s Day, i was challenged not to think of the surface work of mothers. I thought of all the work of mothers. The work that Mother’s Day for Peace was originally about. I thought about radical moms, moms on welfare, sex worker moms, single moms, moms of soldiers, soldier moms, moms in prison, majority world moms, second shift moms, moms in struggle, you know, everyday moms. Let’s show some real appreciation for moms. Don’t give flowers, give yourself to a better tomorrow.
Wow, this really isn’t what i planned to write when i sat down. But sometime you just gotta let the mind wander.
