The Spring Flowers Are Blooming For You Dear Mothers!

Today, March 21st, we celebrate the spring beginning and most importantly we celebrate Mother’s Day!

Lebanon and some Arabic countries celebrate Mother’s day on March 21st.
Most countries celebrated it the second Sunday of May. Other countries celebrate it the first Sunday of May like Spain and Portugal. And countries like UK and Ireland and Nigeria celebrate it the fourth Sunday in lent, this year it’s March 31^st.   

I’m really thrilled that spring is officially here, never been a winter lover and the weather really affects my mood. I love to see the sun, the green, and the flowers.
Welcome dear “Spring”! 😀

• 

• 

• 

I find it really great to honor the mothers with the Spring beginning, the season of the new beginnings, the weather is warmer, the flowers are in bloom, trees and bushes begin to grow new leaves, colorful flowers and beauty…The same feeling that a real mother offers and feels when she gives birth to a child!

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers out there and to my mother mostly!
You deserve to be honored daily and continually but we are too selfish and you are too loving and devoted!

• 

• 

What can be said about the Mothers? Many words have honored the mother and many words have been spoken but the most honest are the ones coming from the heart, from a child who lost their mother, from a child that had the chance to receive the care, the tender and devotion of a loving mother! Nothing compares to that!

The day you decide to be a mother, is the day you decide to give your life and all to your children, sacrifice will seem eternal and you will forget yourself for the sake of your kids’ happiness and comfort! You feel their pain and you wish you can carry their problems and give them the world and many days you will be so desperate and down because they won’t listen and they might take wrong decisions but you will just pray for them and remain by their side, I believe mother’s prayers are powerful and I wrote about this in a separate post: My Mother’s Angels
https://huguetta.wordpress.com/2019/02/04/my-mothers-angels

• 

• 

• 

 Despite all these sacrifices, the children don’t belong to their parents, as Gibran Khalil Gibran, the Lebanese writer and poet said: “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They came through you but not from you and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.”

As hard as it seems, it’s the reality and a pure fact, but the mother that plants a good seed, will always reap the harvest of greatness!  The kids will leave, but the love will never fade, they will be away but they will carry the devotion and care they’ve been granted and this will affect their entire life!

No one can replace the mother’s love, the mother’s place, the mother’s affection. No one can fill the void that a mother absence leaves. Or the lack of her affection and care’s void. No one ever!

Napoleon Bonaparte’ famous quote on mothers says it all: “Give me good mothers and I shall give you a great nation!”

• 

• 

• 

This leads me to ask if every woman that gives birth to a child is a mother?

Frederick Douglas said: “it is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men”.

I’m asking this question because of the horror that’s actually happening nowadays and the crime of producing without the will or the ability to raise these children and take care of them!
I’ve been working on a legal study for an NGO I’m volunteering with in my free time; this study is about the Children with unknown or absent parents, how to register them in the official records and grant them identification documents. Any paper that proves they actually exist!  

Close your eyes and imagine: you have no parents, no ID, no papers, nothing that proves your existence, you can’t go to school, graduate, or work, you don’t have a life! A disaster…The details are shocking, this study has really drained my energy! Even though I know the situation but having true examples, true human beings is always different!

How grateful I felt for having parents and identity while working on this study!

In some European countries the mother is allowed to leave her baby born in some box if she doesn’t want to keep them. In France she has the right to deliver under X (Enfant ne sous x), means she can abandon her child after the delivery immediately and there are procedures to take the child and put them in an institution until they’re adopted.  
In many other countries, babies are found abandoned on the streets on daily basis in the trash, or in front of some church or Mosque.

• 

• 

• 

• 

Here I wonder again if every woman that gives a birth is a mother (Just because the topic is about mothers but both parents are equally responsible).

But I also ask how a raped woman can keep a child and raise them properly?
How an abused woman can raise a child properly?
How can a child raise a child when you force a girl to marry at 11 years old! Disgusting!
How a single mother can raise a child alone?
How and How!

It’s a very long subject and deserves certainly a new post! But I believe that it’s a crime to bring a child to this world only to abandon them or neglect them or abuse them! It’s a crime!

Therefore, salute to all the single mothers that are struggling to raise their children and they are succeeding despite the difficulties and stones thrown on them.

Salute to this woman that was dumped but decided to keep the child and give them the ultimate care and love.

Salute to the mothers that are making lot of sacrifices in unhappy marriage just to maintain a healthy environment to her children.

• 

Salute to the hard working women that still find time to raise and take care of their children and they’re doing a splendid job!

Salute to the women that are having a full time job raising their children and taking care of their partners and the house needs! Believe me what you’re doing is much more than a full time job and it’s not even paid! You are real heroes!

Salute to the mothers that lost a child. It’s a wound that will never heal! “No parent should have to bury a child …It is not in the natural order of things” (Stephem Adly Guirgis).
But As men, we are all equal in the presence of death (Publilius Syrus).
I was only 8 years old when I saw our neighbor wailing and weeping for the loss of her 2 boys, adorable young men that used to play with us as kids! I was curious even though they banned me from approaching but I hardly do as I told! And until this day I can’t wipe out from my mind and heart neither the image of their dead bodies neither their mother face nor screams… Since that day, she was never the same!  

Salute to all the real mothers, the loving mothers, the devoted mothers, you made and still making history! You create a better world, better human beings and a more loving place!

• 

• 

I will end with a part of an Arabic song to the Lebanese composer sand singer: Marcel Khalife “My Mother” with English translation.

أمي
أحنّ إلى خبز أمي
وقهوة أمي
ولمسة أمي
وتكبر فيّ الطفولة
يومًا على صدر يوم
وأعشق عمري لأني
إذا متّ
أخجل من دمع أمي

My mother:
Longing for my mother’s bread
And my mother’s coffee
And my mother’s touch
And the childhood grows up inside me, a day on my mother’s chest!
And I adore my life because if I die,
I will be ashamed of my mother’s tears

Happy mother’s Day to all the moms!  Happy Spring everyone 🙂  
Thank you for reading, please share your thoughts and opinions!

Huguette Antoun – March 21st 2019