Mothering and Mother's Day

“Would the kids like a poddy calf?” my phone flashes at me whilst sitting beneath the sails of the Opera House last week. A message from home….D, a farmer down the road from my parent’s property, posed the question with a photo of a lonely, small speckled bull calf folded in on himself (a clever sales tactic on D’s part). The calf’s mother, a Heifer, went through a difficult birth, and despite D’s best efforts, by morning, she’d decided that mothering wasn’t her thing and left him there in the yards.

I ponder this abandonment and wonder at nature’s cruelness … or is it kindness because somewhere in a part of their primal selves that we, as humans, have long stopped listening to, they know that it is the best thing for them?

MOTHERING FERDINAND.

After some discussion and much debate, Ferdinand arrives, a quivering bundle of black flecked white (or is it white flecked black). All big mournful eyes, long eyelashes and wobbly legs.

N carries him to the chook coop - and gets shat on by the calf for his efforts. We laugh and gag and then set about preparing a bottle while N peels the soiled jeans from his body.

We name him Ferdinand - after the gentle bull in Munro Leaf’s story. Though, he may not be a bull for long.

‘What’s another creature to mother’ I had pleaded with N. ‘True’, he’d agreed, ‘We came here to be able to do this sort of thing, I guess’. And so, we set about mothering yet another orphaned animal and laugh at the hodge-podge creation of our hobby farm; indeed, all the animals here have come to us by some means of abandonment…. a stray dog, found as a puppy, people moving and needing to rehome sheep and chickens and pigs…and rabbits. We’ve welcomed them with open arms and little knowledge…but, like most things N and I have done together, we step out on a limb and then somehow, as a team, we make it work.

Ferdinand spends his days in our backyard, where the dogs can keep him company - they lick him lovingly and lie near him but not yet with him. We pat him often, looking deep into his big brown eyes and tell him he is a beautiful boy. Our daughter hums to him. He tilts his chin to us, dribbling mouth and lolling tongue, and looks up at us….then leans his still frail body against us. Does some part of him recognise us as a source of comfort - who knows?

At twilight, we cover his slight frame with an old dog coat (I’m sure the passing farmers laugh) and lead him into the chook yard to lie under the protection of the great pine tree at night - belly full of warm milk and coat mussed from the patting and stroking of the loving hands that mother him.

A MOTHER KEENING.

We stood, huddled together in the cavern of the church…a dark mass of sorrow.

From outside came a sound carried to us on the wind, which should have stood still for a time such as this. It was a sound like no other I have heard before—a woman, keening.

It grew louder, gaining power, as the procession drew closer. The sound seemed to echo around us, tearing through the silence we had created, drowning out any other sounds of life, and rightly so.

We stood rooted to the spot by the mournful sound - statues clad in sombre fibres. I could not understand where that kind of sound came from...but it spoke to me. It spoke to all of us - it is what grief sounds like.

Raw, unencumbered grief.

Pulled from the very depths of this woman’s womb. For she had lost her son… a young life full of promise, cruelly torn from its anchor.

The sound of her loss and what it meant will forever reverberate in my memory.

Note: As a young 20-year-old writing Keening in my journal, I could not imagine experiencing a loss so great that the sound of it would tear itself from someplace deep within your soul. As a mother, I now know where that place is and how the sound of such grief would not be contained by the silent weeping that is customary in our culture. I hope never to go there.

BECOMING A MOTHER.

On a Sunday in May, in the speck on the map spot of Gingkin…(beautiful country not far from our tiny home on the outskirts of Edith…or Oberon - depending on whom you ask), I attended a morning tea with Maggie Mackellar at?Home Farm . I have admired her work for a long time and swallow the words she weaves in her newsletter, ‘The Sit Spot’ , magazines, and books.

Her newest book ‘Graft ’ has just been ‘birthed into the world’, as she says. It is a book on family, life on the land and motherhood, and we women - some grandmothers, some mothers, some yet or never to be... gather in the cocoon of Home Farm to listen, learn and connect.

She reads from her book - a singsong voice rich with the memories of loss, love, and hope that her words have captured. Becoming a mother to her second child, a son, ten weeks after the death of her husband…whispering words of comfort and confidence to herself in the dark and pledging every part of her to the mothering of her children. She writes,?“This was now my calling. Ambition be damned. Career be damned. The only thing that lay in front of me was to mother these children. And oh how I failed. And yet, and yet, I succeeded.”

I cry as she shares these words and as she talks of removing her cloak of motherhood with the departure of that same son into the wide world of adulting.

I think the magic of her words is that we each recognise a part of ourselves, our journey as women, in the moments she shares.

MOTHER’S DAY

“There isn’t a woman I know who isn’t fu*king exhausted’ a friend laments to me as we chat over a quote on social media about an entire generation of women drowning because they were raised with traditional gender roles while being empowered to be independent.

‘Yes!’ I respond … I’m writing about this now, I tell her…a thought I have been contemplating since N, and I got into a slightly heated discussion over the continuous sound of the alarms going off at varying intervals throughout our work day.

(Side note, we both work remotely from home….in our shoebox sized house. He from the kitchen table and me from a desk 800mm wide in our living room. We are on top of each other - and not in a fun way.)

“Bloody hell, babe, turn that thing off”?… he is exasperated because this is possibly the fourth alarm that has sounded that morning…. they repeat on a loop until I get up and do what they remind me…..

6:45 am Pay ‘x’ bill.

7:30 am Put washing on.

8:15 am Check timetable for Wednesday's music performance at school.

10:00 am Answer email from ‘x’

5:30 pm Sew button back on S’s school dress

6:00 pm Call G

7:30pm Ideas for S’s 11th birthday party

“I need the alarms to remind me, babe”, I snap back at him. He begs, “at least change the alarm tone; I’m sick of that one” … me too, I mutter under my breath…me too.

Scowling, I turn off all the alarms and reset them with a new tone. When it next goes off, N says with a smile, ‘Oh, that’s a nice change’….clearly he hasn’t picked up on my blood coming to a boil…if he’d paid attention, he would have known it was - like a copper kettle set to boil water on the stovetop….a low whistling sound that suddenly screams.

‘You know what’ I huff at him, unfairly perhaps, but not unreasonably … ‘Did you ever think that those alarms were a sign of how much I am juggling on my plate right now….instead of bitching about the number of alarms, how about changing the approach?” He stares at me, wary of my mood. “You could have said to me, ‘babe, that’s a lot of alarms, is there something you need help remembering?’ and you would have received a far friendly response, because actually …. I have no space for thoughts right now. I’m full of deadlines, other people’s words, emails from school and bills to pay”…the words tumble out from my mouth full of heat and stress, and I take a shuddering gulp of air at the end, as much to keep the tears in as to regain my breath.

But can I really blame N for my domestic self battling with my career self?

A mother’s day is a double shift…(not the kind my Mother worked when she was nursing other people’s children instead of being home warm in her bed with her family at night)…. it is the double burden of navigating household responsibilities and career success as a modern woman.

In pursuing gender equality, we often focus on breaking the glass ceiling in the workplace, striving for equal opportunities and representation - and so we should. However, there is an underlying battle that many women face—a battle against internal gender roles. Despite being raised with messages of empowerment and independence, many women find themselves trapped in traditional gender expectations, taking on the majority of household duties while simultaneously excelling in their careers.

In speaking with many of my friends, I know that within the hours of a mother’s day, be it at work or home, women often find themselves torn between societal expectations and their aspirations.

Work too hard … ‘You’re not a present enough mother; your children are only young once.’

Stay-at-home mum … ‘You’re not contributing as you’re unpaid; you just sit around all day.’

Career aspirations … ‘Don’t want too much; now is the time you must give to your children.’

I never hear these comments directed towards the guys. I don’t think my girlfriends do either - yet, in the scheme of things, we all have these amazingly supportive husbands. It’s baffling.

The battle against internal gender roles requires conscious awareness and intentional action. It begins with challenging and questioning societal expectations, both externally and internally. Recognising that true gender equality means sharing responsibilities within relationships and rejecting the notion that ‘mothering’ is solely the job of one person. It takes a village.

I know that through sharing experiences, women can find solace in knowing that they are not alone in their struggles. Letters from my youth have taught me that. Venting over wines with friends has taught me that. My mother has taught me that.

M. X