ABSCONDING fathers – whether they are domiciled in the home or not, have precipitated severe dislocations in family structures, societies, and ultimately in nations; but there are also many instances of neglectful, abusive mothers when fathers have to assume the dual parental roles.

There are also extended relatives who play pivotal roles in bringing up children – elder siblings and grandmothers, for instance.
Parenting a child is not just donating a sperm, or carrying it in one’s womb and then giving birth – even animals do that. Parenting a child means being there every step of the way – guiding them, teaching them practical survival skills, having their backs in times of travails. But most importantly, parenting a child means inculcating into them a moral compass whereby they could become good human beings and exemplary citizens above all.
Mothers see their adult children always with the heart, no matter how old they grow; and those caring hearts never cease to bleed when they see their children in pain, or being taken advantage of.
A good parent’s reward is experiencing the joy of a child maturing into adulthood whereby they become responsible members of the general society, with all that this implies.
Bringing up a child and nurturing them to adulthood is at all times a difficult undertaking for parents; but moreso for single parents and extended family members who, because of circumstances, are constrained to bring up a child not their own.
For those parents supportive of each other, with extended family also being part of the nurturing synergies for a child, in most instances that child grows up to fend adequately for him/herself – emotionally, psychologically, financially, in all the ways that matter.
In single parent households, however; or even in households where the father absconds from his responsibilities and, to boot, is abusive and a bully who demands what he has not earned, thereby robbing his children of the basic necessities of life, the children may grow up with a lot of emotional and psychological baggage.
Many times mothers are forced to work long hours to provide the basic necessities for her family, only to be bullied out of her earnings by profligate, degenerate fathers, leaving the children in dire want and deprivation.
The anomaly is that if a mother, for whatever reason, remains in the abusive situation the children grow up to resent the mother; mainly for being absent at crucial times in their lives, or for allowing herself and them to be subjected to the abusive and impoverished situation imposed by a non-constructive, non-productive husband and father.
The children in turn oftentimes adopt the father’s aggressive, disrespectful attitude toward their mother, which distorts their moral compass. This disrespect and/or neglect of mothers who gave their all, albeit it may not have been sufficient to stave off hunger and loneliness at all times, often lends to situations where there is no mutual support system when the children become adults. And it may even translate into consequential disrespect from grandchildren.
Today is Mother’s Day, a day designated to honour mothers; but mother’s day is every day. This highly commercialised affair whereby children engage in a one-stop-shopping spree, whereby they shop for gifts for friends, aunts, the mothers, sisters and child-mothers of spouses; and probably fit their own mothers somewhere in the motley collection, in no way signify any special relation, especially a child’s love, loyalty and respect for their mother.
A mother should shun such material and empty gifts as being unworthy of that special bond that should exist purely between a mother and child. Neglect, disloyalty, disrespect and general degradation of a mother and her principles all through the year, for whatever reason, then a one-stop-shop to make a group of women feel special on a designated day holds no significance for that special and unique relationship of love, trust and respect that should be integral to a mother and child relationship.

Mother

(If I have extras of anything I usually take it to the patients in the hospital who do not have visiting relatives, and sometimes read to the babies. One day I met an old woman whose eyes haunted me. She had been abandoned by her children, all of whom joined their father and are doing well overseas, and all of whom have forgotten the woman who taught and nurtured them to adulthood, and I was impelled to write the following)

You lie there
Alone
Lonely
No one to care
A hospital bed
Your place of sanctuary
Your sickness of the soul
Catalyses a disease of the heart
Broken
On the rack of betrayal
Used
Abandoned
You enfolded
Within your femininity
One whom you loved
You have cradled
Within your womb
The seeds from that love
Your nurturing
Fructified in a crop
Now lost
In the diaspora
Of the search
Of the pot of gold
At the end of the rainbow
In the land of opportunity
And you are the casualty
Whose security
Is the sleep induced
By a needle bringing oblivion
And temporary cessation
Of the gnawing of the sorrows
Feasting on your soul
And you lie there
Once fecund
Fallow
A quintessential woman
Today barren
Bereft
Relic of a past generation
Waiting
Ever waiting
To be called “mother” once more

Parvati Persaud-Edwards