It’s been an interesting week in motherhood for me, what with my baby daughter giving me the gift of norovirus on my birthday last week, just when my husband was abroad, and just in time for the crippling snow. “How many inches was it?” asked my own mother incredulously from Illinois, where they routinely salt the roads in winter and every town has several snow ploughs.

So I’ve had more time than usual to read about the origins of Mothering Sunday, also known as Laetare Sunday, the mid-Lent moment that falls three weeks before Easter, when we pause from our penitence, and some churches break out the pink vestments.

Mothering Sunday is traditionally a day when, in times past, people in domestic service would travel home to spend the Sunday worshipping at their “mother church”, and would see their families for the first time in months, and this grew into a celebration of mothers.

This custom of going back to one’s “mother church” gives me pause. Where would I return to, if I had the chance? In a childhood spread across multiple continents, I always felt most at home in church, but there have been so many of them in my life, and I don’t think I could say for sure which was truly the mothership, as it were.

But oh, how clear it was to me this week. The klaxon went out on Friday morning after I was taken ill on Thursday night, and the St Mary’s family swooped in to help, arriving at my door one by one and kicking the snow off their boots like arctic Magi with shopping bags full of jelly and soup and rehydration salts. I was alone, but I was cared for. I was safe.

Caring for others isn’t just the purview of mothers, and belonging isn’t just about your hometown. So, this Sunday, let’s raise a glass of fizz (perhaps even the pink stuff) to the people in our life who scoop us up and protect us when we need it most - mothers and non-mothers alike. 

Esther Brazil

Ministerial Assistant