Mother’s Day has never been about presents to my family.
Growing up, it was more about nature giving us the green light to start moving than anything else. Every Mother’s Day of my childhood is filled with the same memory. We’d head to my gram’s (Grandma’s food alone was worth the trip) where she’d have the best fried chicken in the world sizzling in Crisco in her electric skillet on the counter.
We’d eat and then head out, like we did every Mother’s Day, each of us with a bag or two and paring knives. We’d drive out the run in whatever direction Gram wanted to go. Mom would pull the car off to the side of the gravel road and we would spend the rest of the day green picking. Grandma could spot milkweed or nettle from a mile away.
We carried on this tradition of Mother’s Day green picking until my gram was well into her 80s. Even on her walker, we could still be seen moseying down the road, gathering her greens. They looked and smelled too much like spinach to me when they were simmering on the stove, but I loved the tradition of going to search for them.
As Gram grew older the tradition changed. Our trips down the run grew shorter. Sometimes she’d sit in the car and steer us toward the plants. Those days of green picking are still some of my fondest childhood memories. There’s something comforting about traditions from my childhood, even if it’s just the memories of my Gram whom I loved so much and the fact that Mother’s Day in my family has never been about things so much as time and preparation.
Mother’s Day was started in West Virginia, in Taylor County, by Anna Jarvis in honor of her mother, Anna Reeves Jarvis. Reeves Jarvis had lost eight children to disease and, in response, organized Mother’s Day Work Clubs to buy medicine and to teach mothers how to create more sanitary practices for fixing food and cleaning so the children had a better chance of survival.
The death of her children broke her heart, so she organized and created a new way of operating by educating other women and developing leaders in the communities. She encouraged women during the Civil War to act with compassion and care to soldiers from both sides of the war, and created Mother Friendship Day when the war had ended as a way to honor veterans from both sides.
Following Reeves Jarvis’ death in 1905, her daughter organized and pushed until, in 1908, which, ironically, is the year of my Gram’s birth, Mother’s Day was observed for the first time, six years before it was named an official holiday by President Woodrow Wilson. To her, Mother’s Day was a day for mothers to rest, and she was so upset that it had become such a commercialized holiday. Anna Jarvis went door to door with a petition to have the holiday rescinded because it had become so commercialized and strayed so far from its purpose.
Anna Jarvis was moved to a sanitarium in Pennsylvania where she stayed until her death. Her bill there, according to PBS Learning Media, was paid by the card and floral people, leading people to believe that she was such a threat to the Mother’s Day industry that she was removed from her community and never was allowed to return.
Imagine being such a powerful activist that those in power threatened by you pay your bills to keep you locked away from your community! That’s the type of work that West Virginia women have done in the name of social justice since the Civil War. That’s what flows through our bloodlines and DNA. That’s what I want all of you mamas to remember the next time you’re asked to speak up about what needs to be changed to improve your quality of life. Some big opportunities, which can quickly become lost ones, are facing mothers today. There’s the expansion of the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit…there’s paid leave and childcare funding … there’s the “For The People” Act. ALL of these things directly affect our families and our neighbors. We, the caregivers, have to speak up and fight for what’s best for all of us.
Let’s embrace the roots of Mother’s Day this year and remember that women have been in the front of social justice movements here since the Civil War. Women, standing up in support of children and families was the founding principle of this holiday, and it’s about demanding the best for all women and children.
Make phone calls or write emails. Record a 30 second video. Will you rattle some windows in honor of our Mother’s Day DNA?
Onward,
Amy Jo
