The Siege of Mother’s Day

I recently read a novel based on the historic facts of the Siege of Malta.
In it a small group of knights and native Maltese people held at bay the might of the Turkish empire. Many chapters revolved around desperate peasants and slaves rebuilding walls which were blown up by the relentless cannon fire of the Turks. No sooner was a wall rebuilt (with a couple of slaves being blown up in the process) then it was demolished again by cannon fire, and rebuilt again, and so on. This continued for several months. It totally perplexed the Turks who assumed victory would be a done deal in a matter of days.

Eventually those feisty knights managed to outfox the Turks and they turned their galleys around and headed back East. They were triumphant but they also had to fix a helleva lot of walls in the process.

Many accounts of sieges are similar. We had our own in Ladysmith over a century ago. They don’t sound that kiff. It’s not easy manning the stations when there are no reinforcements. Obviously women always come out as the stalwarts - feeding the kids, amputating limbs, keeping the fire going that will aid in the fire warfare, building shelters, praying, feeding the soldiers, collecting rubble for above mentioned wall repairs, slaughtering the horses for food, dressing wounds, home schooling... I’m getting ahead of myself.

In fact let’s be honest in most war stories it is the women who keep their shit together. Although I am 100% certain, and this is based on solid historic evidence, that they muttered the term FFS under their breaths a lot. And sometimes it wasn’t just muttered.

You see in times of crisis the multitasking skills of a woman become her weapon. She can literally run a country (when given the chance) AND feel empathy at the same time. Aren’t we just great?  At any moment we can account for all wall repairs, water ration stocks, bullet stores, fatality numbers, recipes  for wound treatments, what the countless waifs and stray are going to have for supper and why Francois the blacksmith’s child is having a bit of a sad day.

It does, however, also mean that being present in a moment of crisis can be difficult. It’s hard to focus on one thing when you have a million other things to get done.

I am currently a Maltese peasant. My bricks and mortar are loads of laundry, Duplo, Hot Wheels, Eva’s feeding chair, bottle brushes, nappies, lesson plans, Microsoft Teams and meals. No sooner do I build a wall then another part in my defenses gets blown up. (Refer to the state of our couch cushion post Wheatbix explosion above). It is relentless and I never see an end in sight. At any moment I can tell you when my children had their last bowel movements, I can tell you how much bread we have left, what we’re having for supper in three days time, when Eva should have her next nap, when the last time the courtyard floor was swept, how many pairs of clean pajamas my children have left and so forth... And don’t even get me started on the full curriculum of teaching that I do every 45 minutes all week with the other job I run concurrently to being a mother under siege.

And this is a siege. We have been cut off from the reinforcements that make day to day functioning easier.  We are required to work on every single imaginable level of labour from wiping bums to running multimillion businesses. We are chefs, we are nurses, we are cleaners, we are nannies, we are counselors, we are leaders, we are women. FFS

And sometimes I face my guilt at the end of a 47 hour day when I know that I have not been present with my children. When I have been distracted by the lists and lists of tasks running through my mind at any given moment. When I haven’t noticed my husband’s fatigue. When I haven’t noticed my own destructive moods that turn me into a sergeant major and not a wife and mother.

And one day I will have to process all of that. But not today. Today I turn back to my wall of (laundry, cooking, teaching, cleaning... ) And I know that mothers across the world are turning to theirs. Our siege is challenging. It calls on us to be the women God has called us to be. We have homes to keep stable, jobs to keep, money to somehow generate, a generation to raise.

And perhaps, one day, we too will be remembered as a generation of women who kept the world going one home at a time, one siege at a time.

This Mothers Day I celebrate you all, may the grace of God go with you onto your battlefield.