By Courtney Haden

The sudden upsurge of activity at florists, card stores and paint-it-yourself porcelain emporia could mean only that Mother’s Day is nigh again. Once more an obliging son or daughter is hectored by all manner of marketers to rush out and purchase all manner of merchandise, and once more a similarly obliging mom will have to figure out a place to put it all. World without end, amen.

The commercials are persuasive, as always, though I think they exaggerate a bit when they suggest that a vacuum cleaner or a luxury convertible make the perfect Mother’s Day gift. Regarding such ads brings us to the essential fallacy of the whole Mother’s Day economic stimulus plan: there is no Oreck, no Lexus, no appliance, balm or jewelry that could ever pay your mother back for what she has given you. You know this, even as you’re standing at a display case in Bromberg’s eyeing freshwater pearl bracelets. You can’t deny it, even as you pause at Macy’s before a shelf full of crock pots.

Though you might have been raised in a circus family, spending your formative years living off corn dogs and Tareytons as you criss-crossed the nation bringing the magic of the Mile-Long Midway to grateful carnival lovers, the fact remains that your mother gave you life. Top that. I suspect the national emphasis on gift giving masks our reluctance to contemplate the daunting struggle raising children represents. We should feel beholden to our genetic code, because, really, without innate impetus, what woman in her right mind, presented with its staggering list of chores, would choose motherhood?

Submitted for your consideration: my mother. Carmetta Craddock emigrated to the United States and Tuscaloosa County, leaving behind a hardscrabble upbringing made more harrowing by her matter-of-fact recounting of it. A nurse by trade, she took up with a doctor from only slightly more cosmopolitan Blount County. They wed and stayed so for more than a half-century, until he gently disengaged from this earthly realm last year.

Since there is no nationally celebrated Spouse’s Day, we shan’t delve into the wondrous tale of their matrimony. Besides, it is poor form and worse journalism for children to characterize their parents’ lives together.
What a child is entitled to explore, however, is the nature of its mothering, and in our case—six little Hadens in an impossibly teeny house in Homewood—one might well wonder how any mothering got done at all.
(By the way, my father was an equal partner in this enterprise, but after all, this is Mother’s Day we’re discussing here.)

These were not just six kids, but six actively curious, preponderantly restless, skittering, talkative jumping beans; a gaggle that would’ve sent Mary Poppins lunging for some Prozac. Compounding the task was the 10-year span of our birthings, which meant the oldest was off to middle school while the youngest was yet toddling.

Somehow, Mama found time to deal with each and all at their precise level of need. Nobody was overlooked, everybody was affirmed. There’s no calculating the reams of construction paper she cut, the ocean of fish sticks she baked or the gallons of merthiolate she daubed. And did I mention she did all this parenting without benefit of automobile?

My mother put aside her profession to make us her career. All we have to do is live up to that.

When grandkids came along, Mama took just as much interest in her children’s children. They got the same learning opportunities we had been given, the same chances to put theory into practice, the same gifts of practical context, the same occasions to explore imagination. Only this time, she could send ‘em home when she was done.

Like so many of her generation, Mama’s life spans some of the most tumultuous years of the Republic’s history. She lived through the Great Depression; a world war and several smaller; presidents good, bad and indifferent. She saw both Jim Crow and the Berlin Wall tumble. In her time, 78s evolved to compact discs and party lines became DSL lines.

Nevertheless, she still has her hair done one particular way and at one particular salon. What’s more, there’s always Buffalo Rock ginger ale in the refrigerator. You can’t get too carried away with all this progress.

Mama is still diminutive and authoritative, unfailingly polite and unflinchingly pragmatic. The tiny house must sometimes feel too large without Daddy at hand to enclose that space, but mere mortality is not going to slow her down. Even as I type this up, she’s getting ready for a road trip to New York for her first grandchild’s college graduation.

All in all, quite a journey for the little girl from Tuscaloosa County, and it’s not nearly over.