The hand that rocks the cradle

“Heaven Lies Under the Feet of the Mother.”
- Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)

Somewhere in the world a child sleeps
and somewhere a woman screams
for all the world to hear
if only they will listen.

Sometimes it’s not enough,
I suppose,
to speak aloud inside your head
and assume you will be heard.

And therein lies the quandary.

So many women, so many mothers, the world over, screaming so loudly that it is deafening to them… but nobody else can hear because it is all contained within. It’s like screaming underwater and expecting to be heard. Throwing a blanket over yourself and expecting to be seen. Staring at a wall that won’t look back, let alone talk back. Mothers can’t complain. Mothers can’t get sick. Mothers can’t have desires. Mothers are voiceless. Mothers are invisible. Mothers have to have the dinner on the table. Mothers have to suck it up.

This is how it has been for generations of women. Take an average woman raising her kids in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s… An average woman in Egypt, Australia, the US, the UK…

It’s quite ironic, really, that Egypt is known as The Mother of the World, with mothers being one of the most voiceless groups in society. And not just in Egypt, but everywhere. It’s a universal theme pretty much the world over: the mother, the heartbeat of the family; the mother, invisible to the world.

The funny thing is that all mothers begin as little girls. Girls who think about doing all sorts of things, of becoming all sorts of things, and not just ballet dancers and princesses. I spoke to a few middle-class women in Cairo and asked what they would change about their lives if they could, and this is some of what they told me:

“…I would study something I loved, like psychology. But I studied law and I never worked one day as a lawyer. I finished university, got married and had children.”

“…I would travel the world… go to London, go everywhere. But what can I do?”

“…I would become an ambassador and work in the diplomacy field, travel the world and experience other cultures. At the same time, I would show them my culture and show them an example of an Egyptian woman, because I believe that the world thinks that Egyptian women are uneducated. In Egypt at the present time, there are female judges and female ministers in parliament.”

“...I wish I had time to draw. I loved to draw when I was younger. And I was good at it. I haven’t done a drawing for years.”

I’ve heard my own mother’s stories of her childhood and adolescent dreams, which were quite lofty: she wanted, among other things, to travel to Africa to work with Albert Schweitzer, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning missionary; and to be an orchestral conductor; and perhaps (if time had permitted after her conducting commitments) be a flight attendant so she could see the world.

I’ve seen disillusionment in the eyes of many women, in Egypt, Australia, the US, and many other countries… and have been on the receiving end of their ‘confessions’ about how frustrated they are. Secret confessions, because there is a very specific guilt associated with feeling this way.

I guess the question here, for these women and millions of others like them, is: What has happened? How did the gap between these dreams and reality become so wide? Why is there no middle ground? Why is there no halfway point?

So many women, especially mothers, talk with wistful enthusiasm about how they would like things to be. “Next time around, I will go and live in the south of France and be a painter.” “In my next life, I’m not having so many children!” “I always secretly wanted to be a romance novelist.” Next time around? Next life? Always wanted? Secretly? What the hell is going on here? There is no next time around. Unless you’re a Buddhist, this is your one shot. And why all the secrecy? No one should have to secretly want something; there should be open ears available to hear about it.

Many women make such statements like a kind of mantra which, repeated often enough, becomes who they are. They become a package of haunted longing for what they didn’t do, for what they once wanted and, under all the layering of everyday life, still desperately want, although the shape of their desires may have changed over the years. Maybe they don’t aspire to the house in France anymore; maybe an afternoon painting once a week would be enough to fill that space in the heart.

Women romanticize their future lives, all the while barely contemplating the possibility that they could have creative contentment now, in this life. Many women, from many generations, have been tied to the home and all that entails: kids, husband, housework, three square meals on the table. Of course these are huge accomplishments in themselves but, for many women, they are also intrinsically unsatisfying to her creative spirit, whatever form that might take. And they also entail a drudgerous monotony that can lead to restlessness, a low sense of self-worth and, ultimately, a burning inner fire that is fueled by a sense of loss at what could have been — but what has instead remained locked away in their heads and the dwindling recesses of their hearts. Having nowhere else to go, the discontent in their souls will in time seep out the edges like a trickle of poison.

How has society overlooked the needs of women for so many generations? How can any society flourish to its full potential and raise children into worthwhile adults when the women raising them have no creative outlet? Mothers, in raising their children, are moulding the future of humanity, the future of the world.

The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world.

And the heart that loves the child needs refueling every now and then. It needs a sanctuary.

Where is the girl who wanted to be an ambassador? Where is the teenager whose ambition was to be an orchestral conductor? Where is she hiding, the young girl who wanted to be a psychologist? She is in the kitchen every day cooking a hot dinner, her disappointment and anxiety piling up around her next to the carrot peel. Feeding her family while neglecting to feed herself. She is taking care of the housework, the swimming lessons, the laundry, the ironing and countless other tasks, all the while feeling like her life is slipping away.

One of the things that gave my mother joy was the vegetable garden where she grew huge red strawberries as sweet as icing sugar and as big as a small fist. Perhaps those strawberries were the manifestation of everything that was in her heart that remained unspoken and undone for so many years. Every woman, every mother, needs to have a ‘strawberry patch’ into which they can pour what is in their heart and soul, so they don’t internally combust. And they need time and space to cultivate their ‘strawberries’, whatever they might be.

Women in Egypt. Women in Australia. Women wherever. They’re not much different. What is it that makes them the same? It’s what is inside them. It’s the dreams that lie dormant, waiting for a spark to reignite them. It’s the things that remain unspoken.

Take any average middle-class mother in Cairo, a woman perhaps of my mother’s generation. I think how hard it would be for her to view me as I live my life, watching on as I leave the house, jump in a taxi and go wherever I like, with no one to answer to but myself. She never had that freedom. It was never appropriate for her to just go and sit alone in a café sipping coffee and having space for her own thoughts. That would have been seen as both idle and inappropriate. In a culture that reveres the mother, the mother, the mother, where the mother comes first, where the mother is so respected and adored, there is little consideration given to the real needs of the mother, the real needs of the woman that she is, outside of being a mother. The need to have time to nurture herself and express herself creatively so she is able to be replenished and then in turn give back to her family and consequently to society. Because before she became a mother she was a girl, a teenager, a woman, with cumulative experiences, hopes and yearnings that didn’t simply disappear the moment she gave birth.

And so she continues on, as millions around the world do, sucking herself dry, and allowing everyone around her to suck her even dryer, until at some point there may be little left but a woman mourning for a life half lived.

All men and women should go to their mothers right now and ask them: "What did you want to do when you were a girl? What were your dreams? What did you love to do? What part of yourself did you shut away? What small thing can you do today to reopen it? Please, speak…"

When the mother has time to take care of herself, the children will thrive. The mother is the heartbeat of the family, the heartbeat of society, the heartbeat of the world. Boom boom boom.