Yes, I'm one melted Mommy. Eleanor brought some special things home from Kindergarten yesterday, and I had to work hard not to tear up. She was SO proud to show me her work, as always - every day when she comes home she brings out her entire folder of kindergarten flyers and worksheets and wants me to look at them right away (and usually makes a lovely mess of my desk doing it). But these were particularly special, and she proudly read the cards to me (we moms do need interpreters, after all), and looked at me with the best, satisfied smile on her face. I told her it was a special Mother's Day for me, because it's the first one that I've been her mother, and she's my best gift. All my girls are my best gifts.

I had been celebrating doing well at the university (prepare for wanton self-congratulatory stories here), despite discouragement from a neuroscience professor who, when I told him of my upcoming trip to China and my wish for additional readings to bring me up to speed on the advanced material we were covering, told me I had no business being in the neuroscience dual Ph.D. program, and that he planned to contact my department with complaints of how woefully unprepared SLHS doctoral students are. Well, he can go ahead and make an example of me now - I received an 'A' in his course, and he can go suck an egg. I also had several undergraduate students tell me that the class I taught was the best they've ever had at CU, which I appreciated very much. The department chair told me that some students had even switched majors (joining SLHS) because they liked my class so well, which naturally felt very good to hear. I was proud of myself as a working mother with a few brains in her head - but receiving Eleanor's card was far more satisfying. Going to China to bring her home is bar none the best thing I've done this semester; probably the best thing I've ever done, period. And not because of what I've done for her - it's what she's done for me, and for our family. She has completed us.

I know this particular daughter of mine has several mothers, who probably don't celebrate Mother's Day - but I celebrate their gift to me in bravely birthing a beautiful girl, and bravely loving her briefly before letting her go. And I thank the people of China for trusting me with one of their most precious citizens, and for allowing me to be her mother.

I am reminded that Mother's Day was not, in fact, created by the greeting card and floral industries (although it would seem so today), but was first called for by Julia Ward Howe as a protest against the carnage of the Civil War. She was a Unitarian, which I appreciate, too. Mother's Day is the result of one mother's call for peace. That I would receive a Mother's Day card from a child who comes to me as the result of international cooperation seems even more appropriate, when reading Howe's original proclamation in 1870. Here's to the "great human family:"

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:"We will not have questions answered 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 voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.
"Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.