Mother’s Day mother – NRC

You may not know her name, but without Ann Reeves Jarvis (1832-1905) there would have been no Mother’s Day on Sunday. No cup of tea in bed, no rusk with strawberries, cheerfully painted pasta chain, forest roses or perfume. What started with one mother who took care of other mothers grew into a global tradition. Well, a daughter was also involved. A daughter who founded a monument for her mother – and then wanted to break it down again. But we will come up with that automatically.

The story begins in West Virginia, in the mid -nineteenth century. Poverty and illness are omnipresent. Ann Reeves Jarvis is the mother of eleven children – or even thirteen, the sources do not agree on that – of whom only four mature. Although such a high infant mortality was not unusual at the time, it seems to me that a person could easily break under so many worries. But not this methodistic pastor and Sunday school teacher. She turns her grief into decisiveness.

In 1858 she founded the so -called Mother’s Day Work Clubs: a women’s organization that wants to make health care more accessible, assists poor families and mothers learns to prevent diseases such as typhus, cholera and dysentery. During the American Civil War (1861-1865), Jarvis insists that the organization remains neutral. During a measles epidemic they and its club members northern and southern soldiers. After the war, she is committed to reconciliation. In 1868 she organizes a Mother’s Friendship Day, intended to bring together northern and southern veterans and their family members.

From here the story continues with Anna Jarvis, one of Anns four children. When her mother dies in 1905, Anna swears to keep her social legacy alive. As a child, she once heard her mother sighed that it was time for a day when the generally invisible work of mothers was honored. On the second Sunday of May in 1907, Anna, in the church where her mother taught for years, organizes the first official Mother’s Day. In the following years she – her activism does not have a stranger – tireless campaign for a National Mother’s Day, something she achieved in 1914.

And now that tragic turn. The day that the daughter of ‘Mother Jarvis’ has created with so much conviction is soon taken over by florists, bakers, card printers and department stores. Where she saw a modest, worthy tribute to hard -working mothers, this changes to her horror in a commercial circus full of chocolate boxes and very expensive bouquets. Furly, she tries to abolish her own brainchild again. She places advertisements in which she calls on people not to buy flowers for Mother’s Day. Spends all her money on lawsuits against charity institutions that, in her eyes, abuse the holiday to raise funds. In vain. Anna Jarvis dies destitute and bitter.

A sad story, and the commerce around Mother’s Day has certainly not decreased since then. Yet it is nice that this day still exists. Because most mothers deserve to be cherished, surprised, spoiled, celebrated, commemorated, honored and missed. Not necessarily with expensive gifts, but just with some genuine attention. And with a nice dessert of course, that’s always a good idea.

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