mothering mothering sunday: my mother’s mother’s day mothered me

"in pre-capitalist Europe women's subordination to men had been tempered by the fact that they had access to the commons and other communal assets, while in the new capitalist regime women themselves became the commons, as their work was defined as a natural resource, laying outside the sphere of market relations."
Silvia Federici

mothering sunday mothered nothing in my mother
           who after some misunderstandings mothered
                               out of my shuttling between a plainsong church village
                               schooling and a secular bohemian domestic tutelage
                               explained to me at her easel in 1968 the mothering
                                          of mothering sunday in the standard vinaigrette of domestic
                                          service employment conditions of the nineteenth century
                                          into the twentieth such as endured by our cherished tub
                                          alley neighbours two unmarried nonagenerian sisters
                                          sisters who had worked as maids all of their working
                                          lives since twelve in the big hall of the adjacent village
                                          to this their mother village to which they had retired
                                          in old age on a state pension in a tub alley dwelling
                                          paying rent to the big hall of this their mother village
                                          where they still cooked on a range over the fire still
                                          bathed in a tin bath in front of the fire still walked up
                                          the yard to ease themselves in the outdoor nettie never
                                          venturing further than the nearest town all of their lives
                                          my mother and her other neighbour a widow who had lit the fires
                                          of the empty cottage waiting for us strangers coming to it in the dark
                                          of a january night and yet to meet her so the whole place flickered
                                          welcome in gold through the windows and warm for the furniture
                                          coming in from the lorry and us following tearful from the north
                                          she too still cooked on a range over the fire still
                                          bathed in a tin bath in front of the fire still walked up
                                          the yard to ease herself in the outdoor nettie soon
                                          we were in and out daily around the tubbed peonies they took
                                          turns to care for the old ladies in their final years my mother
                                                    sending me sometimes to read to them in their camphored
                                                    bed the three of us bursting over the just williams my
                                                    heart in my mouth fearing they in their frailty might
                                                    expire as i was reading to them sometimes with warm ginger
                                                    cakes or fruit scones or the mothering scent of crushed
                                                    petals from the rose garden apples from the top croft
                                                    they attending their mother church weekly until too frail
                                                    then receiving visitations weekly from the vicar they died
                                                    within days of each other and were the mothers of my first
                                                    bereavement mothering a first unmothering of sorts
                                                    buried in unmarked graves at the edge of the outer
                                                    cemetery mothering sunday hijacked by the greetings
                                                    card industry into mother’s day was the day when
                                                    servants in mid lent were permitted to worship
                                                    back in the mother church of their home village
                                                    back with their mothers their mothers being de
                                                    facto servants’ servants their mothers being every
                                                    one’s mother and free-standing resource the toffs
                                                    fixed well to mark easter with all servants in post
                                                    allowed their servants the fourth sunday of lent
                                                    back in the mother church of their home village
                                                    back with their mothers their mothers being de
                                                    facto servants’ servants their mothers being every
                                                    one’s mother and free-standing resource is exactly how
                                                    before the time came daily for her to care for the widow
                                                    or for neighbours yet to move in up the yard to care for her
                                                    daily my mother explained to me mother’s day understood
                                                    more correctly not needing silvia federici or mikhail bakhtin
                                                    or marina warner to spell it out for her or choosing as some
                                                    do vainly to try turning it to an advantage there is none is
                                                    servants’ day or servants’ servants’ day and my mother
                                                                                                                         nobody’s servant
                                                                                                                 my mother no mother
                                                                                                of servants my mother
                                                                           unmothered mother’s
                                                                   day her mother’s
                                                          day gift to me