Langston Hughes asked in his famous poem if a dream deferred would ‘crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet’. Have you bought your mother a box of candy and a card yet? How about a Congress of Women negotiating world peace? She’d like that.

Americans can trace this occasion back to the years after the Civil War, but Mother’s Day is a custom with deep roots. The following is from a very cool site called mothersdaycelebration.com… This site has a whole page of Mother’s Day lore from ancient times to the present…

The idea of official celebration of Mothers day in US was first suggested by Julia Ward Howe in 1872. An activist, writer and poet Julia shot to fame with her famous Civil War song, “Battle Hymn of the Republic”. Julia Ward Howe suggested that June 2 be annually celebrated as Mothers Day and should be dedicated to peace. She wrote a passionate appeal to women and urged them to rise against war in her famous Mothers Day Proclamation, written in Boston in 1870.

Julia Ward Howe was a writer, philosopher, composer and activist with strong Rhode Island connections, including descent from Roger Williams and living her last days in Portsmouth, home of Anne Hutchinson. She left many poems and essays dealing with war and human rights, most famously this manifesto and she was not speaking metaphorically…

Mothers’ Day Proclamation
Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be of water or of tears! Say firmly: “We will not have questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience. We women of one country will be too tender to those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own. It says “Disarm! Disarm!” The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.

As men have forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his time the sacred impress not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

Julia Ward Howe
Boston 1870

These words were written as our nation still bled from the civil war it took to end legal slavery. Women were not to be allowed the vote for fifty years, and then only in the wake of WWI. A hundred years after these words were written our nation was caught in a disastrous foreign war, Vietnam, and the new millennium brought us a terrible attack on our own soil and the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan from which we have no way to extricate ourselves. We have the power to see a mother’s tears in real time half a world away but no clear path to peace.

No surprise that Mother’s Day has settled to sweets and flowers. The fierceness of Julia Ward Howe is no more comforting than a round of the Battle Hymn. Her life was not easy, and though she was the mother of seven children she was no Angel in the House.

We need another day, where we recognize heroic American women, who forced us to look at our better nature and live up to it. Her challenge still stands.

ANOTHER VIEW: Annie Lamott really hates Mother’s Day. I kind of feel that way myself when a voice on the TV asks if I’ve got my Mother’s Day diamond yet, and thank the gods my husband didn’t get me a talking card or some of the cheap chocolates. On the other hand, any excuse for a party is my motto… I got some nice roses and the New York Times.