How Much Do We Expect of Mothers?

It is amazing how much we expect of mothers, and how much they are of all that we expect. There is no career so demanding, no profession so filled with diverse duties. First of all they offer themselves as sacrifice to bring us into the world. We expect them then to nurse and nurture us, to be our first teacher, to tell us of life and of its moral and spiritual and material truths. We expect them to clothe and feed us, to guide us and guard us, to listen to our long stories, to cherish our hopes, to keep our confidences, to fall in with our moods, to take on our troubles, to understand our sorrows; to be the buffers between us and our misunderstandings with others; to be the restrainers of our overenthusiasm, and the encouragers of our days of despondency, and to have the answer to all our problems. We expect them to beautify our home, to welcome our friends, to be the gracious hostess, the lovely lady; to be cateress and shopping consultant, to know the price and the value of almost everything—and to be all this and do all this on a limited allowance. We expect them to be young and modern, yet wise with the wisdom of age; to set before us an example of virtue and patience and high qualities of character, and to live life of unselfish service; to be a doctor and nurse, the seamstress and the servant to do the menial and manual things and yet stay lovely and alert—to do this with their hands and with all their hearts. All this and much more unmentioned we expect of mothers. Sometimes we take them for granted in the years of our youth. It seems that they have always been there, and we assume sometimes that they always will be. But for most of us, before we have lived through life, we see still hands that once were seldom still and listen for sounds that are silenced, for sounds that once softened every pain, and for songs that once softened every pain, and for songs that once were sweetly sung. And then there grows upon us an awareness of how much we have expected of mothers. Some, fortunately, have mothers with them yet, to show them love and appreciation in the present. But some of us must now remember “the still sweet fall of music far away”—with faith that there shall come a time when we can see and say to them once more what we have been holding in our hearts.