A Mother’s Day Manifesto
Promoting Personal and Communal Responsibility
by Windy Cooler
“Bite this stick,” the doctor might have said as we birthed our children a hundred years ago. The grunting, whimpering, sobbing, pleading, sweating, stinking, bleeding nudity of motherhood channeled into that sweet gag, silent, as the towels mount to soak up all of the nasty animal we are as we labor with the promise of life. Bite this stick.
To date, my most popular blog entry (Of Mice and Moms), is one in which I refuse the bite the stick. It is vaguely about Mother’s Day and it is, honestly, the kind of screaming that does not produce life. Birth is a channeling of the pain, down, not up into the air, pushing through it, sinking, a kind of focus that for all the animal smell, is what is truly animal. But the response from other mothers, and even fathers, people in general, to my scream was huge. I was a little taken aback. We are angry. We are sad. (more…)