Mourning the Motherland

There’s a particularly long traffic light on the way to boot camp that we as moms often joke about when we get to class. We either share what all we got done at the light that morning: writing grocery lists, clearing emails, paying taxes; or it’s our excuse for being late. But this week when a friend casually mentioned that, instead of using the opportunity to check in to class on her phone, she found her mind wandering to the “situation back home”, I knew I needed to pay attention.

I knew it could just as well be my mother country in crisis.

I could hear the worry behind her words, the preoccupation with an alternative reality, the all too familiar feeling of straddling two worlds and not being present to either. As we talked between biceps curls and lunges we connected over the grief and guilt we feel for having access to vaccines and healthcare when loved ones we know are still without. While I know this is not an experience unique to immigrants, I wanted to acknowledge her story and meet her in her pain. She may have been referring to India, but I knew it could just as well be my mother country in crisis.

It was after this conversation that I also knew I would be writing about something different this Mother’s Day. Not because I didn’t want to celebrate mothers per se, but because I wanted to empathize with those mourning for their motherlands. It was a play on words that didn’t escape me.

This pandemic has many of us yearning for home and unable to reach it.

This pandemic has many of us yearning for home and unable to reach it. Home being the flesh and blood family we are longing to see, but also the country whose sights and smells charmed our childhoods and moulded our memories. Both are our mothers and we miss their nurturing touch. Seek their comfort when times are tough. We worry about the family and friends in our country’s closed-off borders and are heartbroken when we see the land hurting and its people suffering. We cannot separate ourselves from the pain because our roots to the motherland run deep and so we sit daydreaming at traffic lights.

My prayer today is that as we collectively remember our own mothers, or are celebrated as mothers ourselves, we do not forget those who lament the land of their birth. Those who are mourning as their motherland groans under the weight of a pandemic that seems to be releasing its grip on our shores. While I know we all have real limits to our compassion and are tired ourselves from the strain of this year, we can still be present to the one friend who needs a mothering touch as she grieves or the reassurance that she is seen.