SUNDAY, 9 MAY 21, was Mother's Day, a day to celebrate, give thanks for and honor our moms. I am glad I and my siblings have a mother to be thankful for, to honor and to celebrate. Mom is in a home in Texas, she is blind and Alzheimer's is taking her farther away from us. I sent her flowers and my brother and sister-in-law who went to visit mom at the home said they were pretty and very fragrant. That is what I stressed to the florist, they have to smell beautiful since she can't see them, and so the bouquet was lilies and carnations and stock. Mom still knows me when I call her and we laugh a lot and she tells me about the people she has gone to see or called and who has visited her and the trips she has made and the good times she has had and that is all good even though all this is happening in her mind where she can see and move about without her walker or wheel chair. All the things she tells me about are good things and some are real memories of things she did. Sometimes she does tell me she is a little confused but then she forgets that too. I am thankful life is happy and good in her muddled mind and I hope and pray it stays that way until she leaves us, hopefully in her sleep.
May 10, 2021
Where were you in 2004?
Me? I was in high school, a bored student with equally bored friends who couldn't wait to quit the suburbs. But lest you forget, as I certainly did, it's also the year that celebrity mega-couple Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez announced that they were splitting up, ending the ill-fated engagement known around the world as Bennifer. It was also the last time we heard from billions of cicadas, the insects that stay burrowed underground until nearly two decades later when it's time to do their thing.
Now, 17 years later, both phenomena are suddenly back, offering the perfect surprise to your Monday news cycle, which we all know could use a dose of serendipity. Some pep.
"It's natural between them and the chemistry is unreal," is how a source close to Lopez described the Bennifer-is-back-in-action reports to E! News. While I have yet to read such a steamy assessment about the return of cicadas, an opinion piece from the Times today claimed "these cicadas will offer something more, a lesson we can all use about now: how to emerge from the darkness."
Wow, how poetic. Hopefully, Lopez, Affleck, and the cicadas have given you a reason to smile and reflect on the early aughts today.
—Inae Oh
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SOME GOOD NEWS, FOR ONCE
A year ago today, just two months into the pandemic, I wrote a Recharge headlined “The Radical Roots of Mother’s Day as a Pandemic-Fighting Movement,” a historical view long before “vaccine surplus” was a conceivable news story (and for much of the world, it still isn’t). I wrote then that for the millions of mothers working on the front lines and millions more incarcerated across America—80 percent of women in jail are mothers—spending Mother’s Day at a mandatory distance is a “test of resilience,” of “solidarity,” of many, many things. An 8-year-old and a 10-year-old had created an online newspaper with their mother called the Quarantine Times; a mother and a daughter had graduated that week in North Carolina together; doulas and midwives were organizing for workers’ rights; and 150 hospital staff got a musical surprise for Mother’s Day in the Bronx.
“Let us know how you view motherhood beyond Mother’s Day at recharge@motherjones.com,” we asked, promising to highlight your stories on “our new daily Recharge blog.”
New daily Recharge blog! A year and a blog and a vaccine later, we want to hear from you again: Is your family vaccinated? Did you see your mother or get seen by your mother? In person? Do you know the naming story and biography of our magazine’s namesake? (Are you a reader who addresses us in correspondence as “Dear Mother”?)
Mother’s Day has taken on new resonance as vaccine rates surge, but major challenges remain. The day is traceable to anti-war activist Anna Jarvis, blues pioneer Bessie Smith, voting-rights activist Julia Ward Howe (who wrote the “Mother’s Day Proclamation”), and tens of billions of women throughout history. Share your 2021 stories of motherhood at recharge@motherjones.com.
—Daniel King
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