A 2020 Mother's Day Salute

It's a strange thing, trying to rise with exuberance to meet a day whose expectations and parameters are a repeat of the day before. I know, for example, I'll be disentangling my kids from several emotional scrums. I know that my daughter won't want to draw things that begin with vowels, but she'll love to sit in my lap and read to me. I know I'll have to pry the iPad from my son's warm, addicted hands. I know we'll get stir-crazy, and then I'll enjoin them, “Do not touch a thing,” while we hold our breath and ride the elevator down to escape our building and gulp as much fresh air as our face masks allow. Leaping into the known, rather than the unknown, presents its own intense challenges.

Let me be clear, I'm no hero. I'm no saint. But I know I'm essential right now. For everything from bearing witness to my daughter as she marches through our apartment with a sign that declares “I Am Having Vere Strog Fellins” to holding my son in Central Park while he soaks his face mask as he sobs, “It's so overwhelming.”

On this Mother's Day, a standing ovation to moms everywhere. Essential workers of the soul.

Salie, with children and husband John Semel

Courtesy of Faith Salie

I think about all the moms I know, making it work, getting up each day, scheming ways to inject joy into their kids’ lives. The impromptu dance party, the thumbs-up to living rooms being turned into obstacle courses, pancakes for dinner, PJs for school. I think about the text chains I'm on for both my kids’ schools. I do hate to traffic in gender stereotypes, but the truth is, it's moms, always moms, checking in with each other, setting up FaceTime play dates and comforting one another by sharing stories of epic home-learning fails, such as my daughter's kindergarten assignment to write down her favorite food. With her little marker-stained fingers, she scrawled “CRAP.” (We're hoping she meant crêpe.) I think, too, about the moms of the college students and adult children who've returned home for safety and comfort. I think of the mothers who find themselves physically distanced from their kids of any age, who still manage to provide spiritual shelter, as they reach out any way they can.

Our children's lives contracted unfathomably fast, and while our kids may feel virtually connected to the outside, it's parents who are truly providing their world. It's a lot; it's a challenge; it's a gift. Did I mention this is hard? A lot of us consider the day a win if we don't yell at the kids and we remember to change out of our night leggings into our day leggings. If we make our kids laugh. That's enough. That's good. And these days, good isn't the enemy of great; good is a kind of miracle. Just keep the world spinning.

Here, in New York City, we have a ritual called The 7 PM Clap. We lean out windows of our cramped apartments to bang on pots and pans and clap our hands for essential workers. It happens to coincide with my kids’ bedtime. I tiptoe out of their bedroom as the glorious cacophony of human hope and gratitude, just for a minute, rings louder than the sirens. It buoys me for another day.