The Power of Mothers and the Cultural Expectations of Women

Hello from Kolkata at the end of my third full week! Gah! I miss y'all!

My time has been filled with answered prayers and experiences that have exceeded all my expectations. Thank you for your support and prayers. Even though things are going wonderfully, it is such a comfort to know that you are with me in thought and prayer.

My research is going excellently and I now have around 14 hours of interviews with around 20 women. This past week I have had the added treat of having my dissertation advisor, Dr. Rebecca Manring, staying in Kolkata just two doors down from me.  We have been able to eat meals together here at the Mission and it has afforded us a closeness that I am very thankful for. It has been such a treat to have her here helping me with research and answering logistical questions, and I feel very much taken care of.  She has been yet another angel put in my path while I am here.  On Thursday, I had the added treat of spending the day with her as we tried (unsuccessfully) to procure a manuscript from a nearby ashram, and then spent the afternoon at Hena’s aunt’s home eating insanely delicious vegetarian food. 

As we sat, Hena and Munuphishi (Hena’s aunt--I’ll tell you more about her in a second) discussed my research. They told Rebecca that they thought my research was important because women rarely talk about the rituals they do every day at home, even though it is a very important part of their lives, because it has simply been accepted as expected ‘women’s work’. I can’t tell you what an incredible gift their words were, and still are. I have hoped for my entire graduate career that I could do some kind of research that actually benefited the people that I worked with—research that wasn’t a totally extractive enterprise.  Because the thing is that all research ‘of Others’ has an extractive facet, or at least the possibility of being extractive. I mean, I get to fly over here, with a grant equal to more than many Kolkatans make in a third of the year (according to the Telegraph, the annual median home income in Kolkata in 2008 was roughly $5,000), enter into women’s homes, ask them personal questions, return home, and use what they told me to complete my graduate career, and produce research that leads to my personal professional success. In really black and white terms, that is what is happening when I study folks living here. In the research I produce, I can try as best as possible to clarify their own voices and to give them the power to confirm or deny my research conclusions, but there is always an extractive side to my research. 

What a joy to hear that, for at least these two women, they are glad I am here doing what I am doing.  While I cannot claim to “speak for” these women, as whatever I present will be incomplete and interpreted through my own perspective, and I’m going to get some stuff wrong, still they see value in the work I am doing. I mean, I couldn’t possibly have imagined a more enriching moment--such a gift, and, honestly, a relief.  And I got to share this moment with my advisor!

But, honestly, the best part of my research has been the relationships I have been able to develop with a few of the women, and the way they have taught me to more fully embody hospitality, love and service. I will be wrapping up my interviews in the coming week, and spend the last week sifting through the data for some possible preliminary conclusions. I want to talk just a bit about some of these possible research conclusions because it relates to this post’s primary topic, which I write in honor of my mom’s (ahem) 29^th birthday (on the 29^th): The tireless, loving, unrecognized work of mothers more specifically, and women more generally.  

Now at the beginning, I will admit that this is a gendered and limiting discussion. Of course, men, fathers, can, and do, tirelessly and thanklessly love, work and care for their families (my father and brother and community mate, Will, do this magnificently). And I could write a similar post about parenthood more generally, being the hardest and most thankless and important job that we somehow, by the grace of God, manage to do. And, of course, one does not have to give birth to a child or be the primary caretaker of a child do be a mother/parent.  But because so many of my discussions in Kolkata have been about the work that is assigned to women historically and culturally my post is a little narrow in its focus, so bear with me.

I have interviewed women from a variety of households—widowed, married, unmarried, with children and without—about their families, the daily worship they offer in their home shrines, and daily work that it takes for them to do both.  The home shrine, or thakur, was, historically, a shrine that each household had, often in a separate room, where one could offer worship throughout the day. 

First, a little background and a short lesson about Hindu belief (I can’t help it—I’m a teacher): Hindu belief understands the embodiments of divinity in a shrine (i.e. statues and pictures) to literally embody the divine. This is not to say that they believe that all of divinity is contained in that statue, or that it is the statue’s material itself that is divine. That would, in fact, be idol worship, and that is what the British and early missionaries accused Hindus of doing. But this is a misunderstanding.  Instead, Hindus believe that out of love for humans and a desire to have relationship with humans, the divine makes itself present in those limited forms, consecrated as temporary embodiments. So, a Hindu may be gifted a statue of, say, Krishna, and she or he would have that statue ritually established as an embodiment of the divine and, in doing so, the power and presence of the divine would enter that statue and reside there. But the divine is still present outside of that statue, and many (though not all) Hindus would claim that the divine is ultimately formless, but makes itself available in forms so that humans can connect with the divine and serve the divine like a family member or friend. Now, at public temples, only men of a certain caste are allowed to oversee worship and care of the shrine and the forms of divinity within it. But in homes, it has historically been women who care for the shrine and its divinity. Many women expressed to me that they understand the divinity in their shrine to be like a family member. So worship often involves serving divinity like you might serve a family member: washing, dressing, feeding and showing love.

Although all family members may offer some form of puja (worship)—such as prayer, lighting a candle or incense, or chanting a devotional song, or simply offering a bow, it is the women, in particular the mothers of the home, who literally care for the shrine and its divinity.  Many women expressed that they loved their thakur and their time caring for it for two reasons: 1) it affords them a peaceful break from the labor of the family, and, 2) it offers them peace of mind concerning their family’s welfare when they give up their worries about the health and wellbeing of family members to God in their prayers. While things are certainly changing in Indian households, as in American households, the historical expectation has been that women would stay home, caring for the family, and men would go out and work. Their care for the thakur—essentially the care for the divine family and the continuation of the family’s spiritual traditions—was a part of this home work. Because things are changing, and many women work outside of the home (in fact, most of the women I talked to do work outside the home), they are having to find a way to manage all of these responsibilities on top of working all day (and often spending hours traveling to and from work).  The constant theme with these women when I ask them how they find time to do all of this has been, “You just do. We just find the time”. Hena has said it is a trans-cultural phenomenon—women magically finding time.

This is what has been called the “second shift”, and I have seen so many of the women in my own American context, including my own mom, somehow manage to find time to love on and care for and discipline, and feed, and clean and put to bed and heal their children after they have been at work all day. I have seen my community mate, Colleen, do it and I have watched comfortably from my own bedroom window as she turned off the lights at 8 pm so she could sleep enough before the first  (and second and third) time her daughter woke up to feed, so that she could still have had some sleep so she could go to work the next day.

I have also watched the physical work that mothers’ bodies must go through to give life to their children; and I have seen how that is never forgotten by the body, so that when I am sick or far away, I think my mom’s body literally aches with me and for me. And I have seen this ache in action—I’ve seen the mama bear claws come out in my defense if someone hurt me or if I was in trouble. My mom even rescued me from a travel abroad trip gone awry in Mexico when I was a sophomore in college---yeah, like flew to Mexico, had a throw down with the study-abroad program, and brought me home on a plane. (Again, I know all parents feel this ache regardless of bodily sex or whether you gave birth to your child, and I know my dad would similarly help, but just bear with me for the sake of thematic consistency, ok?).  When many mammals, like bears or whales, give birth to their babies, they will go for months living off their own body fat, feeding their babies nutrient-rich milk and not feeding themselves so they don’t have to leave their babies until they are old enough to leave the safety of their nursery grounds. Sometimes, when I think about everything involved in motherhood—the emotional, physical and psychological labor, and the incredible depth of love—I am totally overwhelmed and awed.  I wonder how anyone does it. I am reminded of what Barak Obama said about parenthood: the moment you become a parent, your heart, totally vulnerable and ready to be hurt, moves outside of yourself to that child you parent.

Hmmm, can you tell that TJ and I have been thinking about parenthood recently? And can you tell that I’ve been thinking about my mom a lot before her (ahem) 29^th birthday? Yeah, there might be some personal catharsis in this post. Sorry.

I also write on this topic because my work here could not have been possible without the women who have “mothered” me—guiding me, calling me on the phone to make sure I got home ok and that my headache is gone, feeding me delicious foods, connecting me with wonderful families. There is Hena, of course, and certainly Rebecca (who two people in the dining hall here have mistaken as my mother). Without them, I couldn’t have gotten my visa, my hotel room, any of my interviews, or basically any of the logistics necessary for my work. And then there is Munuphishi—definitely the source of my motherly comfort here.

Munuphishi is Hena’s aunt, newly widowed in January by her husband of 55 (!) years. She never had children because she wanted to devote her life to the service and care of others, in particular her nieces who lost their family early on in life.  She also helped Hena start the Society for the Visually Handicapped. She is, I think, understandably lonely these days, and so she has given me invitations to her home on many occasions and she has gone with me on many of my interviews. She calls me throughout the week just to make sure I am doing ok, and she has had me over to her home to feed me at least once a week since I have gotten here. A few days ago, we spent the whole day together in her home. We chatted in the morning, she made me tea, we chatted more, she made me lunch, we took long naps next to each other on her living room sofas, she made me more tea, we looked at a photo album of her family, and then she took me on yet another interview. It was literally like going to a grandmother’s home and being loved on all day.  When you are homesick like I admittedly have been as of late, days like this are so valuable. They build a kind of home in a foreign space, bringing you the kind of peace and rest you only get with family. Yesterday, she called me just to say that I am welcome at her home any time, so I will definitely be spending time there before I go home.  Thank God for mothers of all kinds! And then there is wonderful Sandhya, my adoptive mom from last summer. I have actually been so busy, that we have not seen each other yet, but luckily I have time this coming week to visit her, which I plan to do a few times.

I am realizing that this post may be reifying some very normative ideas, suggesting that women are somehow specially endowed with powers to love, nurture, and protect. I don’t think that. The love and the nourishment of parenthood knows no boundary of sex or gender. However, I will say that our cultures expect a lot of women and the way they manage, often with incredible grace, to fill the multiple roles expected of them and spread love, is truly mind-blowing. AND I will say that without the women who have filled in as my mothers here, without my own mother’s encouragement and prayers, without the inspiring strength of my working mom and my working mom friends, this trip would have been very difficult for me.  So to all you women, legally or biologically mothers or not, filling a billion roles expected of you by our cultures, raising life, spreading love, feeding your families, enriching your communities, balancing, working, and keeping your spiritual lives ablaze—thank you. Your strength, when so much is expected of you is astounding. Don’t forget it. And thank you to moms of all kinds.

And a special thank you and happy birthday to my own mom, Opal Andrews, whose (ahem) 29^th birthday I will not be able to celebrate until after my return home. I know it has not been easy for you to have your daughter half a world away, but you have handled it with grace and have given me such encouragement. I can only hope that when my kid, if I am so lucky one day to have one, does something annoyingly independent, that I can be as encouraging as you. Happy Birthday! Oh, you, who have been mother to countless kids in LISD or, along with my dad, to your childrens’ circle of friends, you make the world better.

And, finally, thank you to all of you who parent in any way. To parent is to embody the unconditional love of God, and, so, to be the hands and feet of Christ.

Your prayers for my health and safety are much appreciated. Please tell me how I may be in prayer for you.

Blessings,

ashlee