Possum Philosophy: The spirit of Appalachian mothers

By ROBERT CAHILL/Columnist

“Arise, then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly: ‘We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with 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, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.’”
-- From “The Mother’s Day Proclamation” written in 1870 by Julia Ward Howe (May 27, 1819 – Oct. 17, 1910), a prominent American abolitionist, social activist and poet most famous as the author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Sunday, May 11, is Mother’s Day, the annual day to honor and celebrate mothers in the United States. According to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia (http://www.wikipedia.en), Howe, after seeing the carnage and destruction of the Civil War, became a pacifist. I found this rather strange from a woman who wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Nevertheless, she apparently did and wrote the poem the “Mother’s Day Proclamation” as a call for a Mother’s Day for Peace to be established in the United States.
While Howe was a native of New York and lived much of her life in Massachusetts, her call for a Mother’s Day was influenced by one of our own native Appalachians, Ann Jarvis. Jarvis was a young homemaker. By 1858, Jarvis began working to improve sanitary conditions in her native Appalachian region. During the Civil War, she organized women from both the Confederacy and the Union to work for better sanitary conditions. By 1868, Jarvis also was working to reconcile both Confederate and Union friends and neighbors.
When Jarvis died in 1907, her daughter Anna Jarvis sought to establish a memorial day for women as a way of honoring the work of her mother. Grafton, W.Va., was the site of Anna Jarvis’ first tribute to her mother. On May 10, 1908, at the Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church, where Jarvis’ mother, Ann Jarvis, had taught Sunday school, the first Mother’s Day celebration took place. The celebration caught on quickly, spreading to 45 states. By 1912 several states declared it an official holiday. In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson (a native Virginian) declared the first national Mother’s Day as a day for U.S. citizens to show the flag as an honor to mothers who had sons killed in the war.
According to Wikipedia, nine years after the first official declaration, the holiday had been so commercialized that Jarvis had become an opponent of what the holiday had become. However, even now, Mother’s Day is one of the most commercially successful occasions. According to the National Restaurant Association, Mother’s Day is now the most popular day of the year for families to dine out at restaurants. Even the Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church has undergone change. It is now the International Mother’s Day Shrine and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
I don’t know much about the history and commercialization of Mother’s Day. I do know I was fortunate to have one of the kindest, gentlest, and, without any doubt whatsoever, most forgiving mothers in all of history. Had she dealt me the beatings I probably earned with all my devilish, miscreant doings and habits, I would have suffered an early and rather painful death from severe beating. Instead, she would usually look so sad my heart would break and I would feel like the lowest abomination ever to be so unfortunate as to draw a breath, for hours or even days.
Now this is not to say she never resorted to corporal punishment, but the deed had to be pretty severe to warrant even the mildest blow from her gentle hands. I remember one such incident vividly.
In the 1950s when I was a young child, Saltville was a booming industrial complex of a town. Crossing the street at the main intersection during shift change could be hazardous, extremely so. After all, at shift change, for a brief period anyway, there were some 500 Olin Mathieson employees leaving work for home and a roughly equal number hurrying to get on the job before their shift started. This happened three times a day, every day of the year. I don’t remember why Mom was so determined to get from the upper side of Saltville to the lower side, and in reality she may even have been headed the other direction. Either way, there we stood, waiting to cross, my hand held firmly in hers. (I think maybe one or two of her sisters were in the party, but I’m not sure.)
Having waited much longer than any 5-year-old boy should have to stand still and hold his mother’s hand, I had had enough. I decided it was time to go. And go I did. I lurched forward with a Herculean effort, surprising my Mom, who usually was pretty alert to my tricks. I jerked loose and ran right into the middle of the intersection with traffic screeching to a halt or swerving hard to miss running over my ignorant little butt. I remember Mom’s wailing cry to stop. It had both the element of shock and that of extreme anger. They made a mixture that would have brought fear to any young man’s heart. I froze. She pounced.
Before I could catch my breath, she had me firmly in a vise-like grip with one hand. Before I could even breathe, she used her free hand to jerk down my pants and blister my sorry, hooligan butt. I mean she set my rump on fire. Then as she slowly calmed, I heard the worst sound of all. It seemed like thousands of adults laughing at my predicament and applauding my Mom’s action. It’s hard to embarrass a 5-year-old boy, but I was and I think that was worse than the beating my bare butt received.
While I think my mom was the finest ever to live, pretty much all my friends think the same of theirs. It comes as no surprise to me that a fellow Appalachian was the driving force behind establishing Mother’s Day. Our Appalachian mothers are wonderful. They do without so their children will have, and I mean in all aspects. Appalachian mothers will wear the same clothes until threadbare so their kids will have nice clothes. They will forgo every pleasure that costs anything so they can give extra to their children. I remember a quote I read, unfortunately I do not remember the author, but it basically said, “My mother was the type that if there were five people there and she realized she only had four pieces of pie would immediately say to all, ‘You know, I never much cared for pie myself, you all eat that.’” That describes my mother perfectly.
Another thing about mothers I knew was they took all their children’s friends to raise as if they were their own. I often heard the expression someone was like a second mother. Well, I had far more than two. Sadly, like my own mother, many of them are in a better place. I miss them almost as badly as I miss my mom. If I made a list, I would probably start with Hilda Coulthard and add Barbara Harris and Beulah Sword. These wonderful ladies treated me like family even when they didn’t have to do so. Sure they scolded me just like they did their sons, but that was just it. It was like I was their son as well and delivered with the same intention of making a better person of me.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the many wonderful Appalachian mothers in our region. Thank you for all you have done and all you do every day and in every way.
“In memory of Maisie Leah Smith Cahill. Heaven is a better place now that you are there.”
A freelance journalist, Robert “Rocky” Cahill writes regularly for the News & Messenger.