Mother's Day 2010

Monday, 10 May 2010
Before I begin recording my escapades in Cameroon, I want to put on “paper” two experiences I had just before I left the U.S. Here is the first:

It was the day after Mother’s Day, at the refugee-resettlement organization where I worked teaching English. For those who don’t know already, for a whole year, I was privileged to work with a richly diverse and ever-changing group of women from (I just have to list the countries): Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine (yes, I recognize the Occupied Territories as a political state), Nepal, Bhutan, India, Burma (no, I don’t recognize the military junta’s “Myanmar”), Thailand, Malaysia, Uzbekistan, Cuba, Burundi, Sudan, and Somalia.

The students I co-taught with a colleague and friend were all mothers of children under five. At the Family Center, these ladies could bring their youngsters who weren’t yet in school and leave them in the care of other resettlement workers while they learned the language of their new home country. When all the mothers showed up, we had a class of 22 to 24. On this day, our art therapist was scheduled to come get creative with our ladies. She usually spent the first half of our 3-hour class with the moms and the other half with the kids.

So by 9:45, our moms were making tissue-paper and pipe-cleaner flowers meant to honor themselves as mothers. I hadn’t been much for art therapy up to this point. I mean, most of these women couldn’t understand English, much less grasp such a linguistically complicated concept as using art to help them process the trauma they’d been through as refugees. Our sessions were usually just a fun break for all of us from my boring phonics and grammar lessons.

This Monday meeting was no different at first (except for the fact that we had a new male volunteer, and so far, none of the women had balked at his presence). We all chatted and smiled while we arranged blooms in our little aluminum buckets. Then, it was time to share. The art therapist asked each mom to talk about what it meant to her to be a mother.

Let me stop here and mention how important mothers are to my former students. These women ranged in age from 18 to around 45. Some had family who’d also been resettled in Kentucky, but most had left everything they’d known, including their mothers, to escape to a presumably safer life in America or to follow husbands who insisted the U.S. would be better than the families’ previous host countries. Some could contact their mothers regularly; many could not. A few had no way of knowing whether their mothers even still lived in the refugee camps they’d left behind. Has anyone ever heard of the children’s book, “I’ll Love You Forever”? There were always many misty eyes whenever we read this to the ladies during our daily story time.

So here were our students who were supposed to talk about themselves as mothers, and instead, each one spoke only as a child with a mother of her own somewhere far away. My turn was toward the beginning, and after me came the male volunteer. Then a mom from Cuba. She got a little choked up talking about what she cherished about her mother, but she did great, despite the din from across the table where the Arabic speakers were rudely chattering, as usual.

Next was one of our newest arrivals and our youngest, an 18-year-old Karen mother of two from Burma. She got out maybe one sentence about her mother, and that was it; she lost it. My co-teacher was sitting next to her and put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. Often our students tried to wipe their eyes, sniff back the snot, and carry on when they cried, but how gratifying to see this girl accept my friend’s comfort: At first touch, she buried her face in the shoulder of a woman who’d only offered a hand. The Arabic speakers were silent.

We were out of Kleenexes, so I went to the nursery to grab a few, and by the time I came back, everyone (including me) was in tears. As we continued around the room, the only sounds were the occasional sniffle and the dulcet tones of whichever mom was giving voice to the child-love that beat within her.

Now I get it. This is what art therapy is all about. What catharsis. What a good thing for each of our women to be given the opportunity to talk about the person who is perhaps most precious to her. What a salutary thing for each to have taken the opportunity to cry. What strengthening thing for us to have been bound by this shared experience. What a comforting thing for all of us to know that the same love flows within those of all cultures and creeds.

Our art therapist really earned her keep that day. Rather than going upstairs to the kids after break, she stayed with us to facilitate a more light-hearted conclusion our creative session. This time, the moms spoke as moms. Their kids drive them crazy. But two-year-olds slurping from the toilet notwithstanding, the same deep love that flooded from each woman for her own mother poured out for her children also.

I ran into another new volunteer at the optometrist later that day, a prim, middle-aged woman with a heart for service. She remarked what an amazing morning we’d had. After seeing those mothers share like that, cry like that, she just had such a deeper respect for what these women had been through. Didn’t we all? It’s not often that volunteers (or any of us) are privileged to witness what moves so deeply within the hearts of our refugee clients. But that day, these women of strength, grace, composure let us see the love and sorrow that makes them also fragile – that makes us all human and binds us together for good.

Post script: Now that I am in a foreign land, I understand on a whole new level why mothers are so important to my former students. My mother now represents the comfort of all that is familiar. When I feel overwhelmed by strangeness, she is the one I think of, the one I want and need. As I strive to adapt and assimilate, to change and grow here, she knows who I have always been and always will be. She knows the core of who I am – that part of me that will never change. She is the earthly keeper of my identity.