Motherhood, the truth (or my truth)?

After reading atim’s comment on my comment about motherhood, and going to the website he recommended, I thought I might as well do a post regarding this “blissful” state of being.

Motherhood, then! A “kaba” every woman should wear comfortablly, or crave to wear comfortablly, until she gets it. Especially when she is an Ethiopian woman where God, marriage & kids – and lately Kinjit or atleast EPRDF-bashing, are things that come with a price tag that has an almost blackmailing quality. You want/believe/follow them, and you are normal (or atleast one of “egna”, “yeHizb lij”, etcetra)! You don’t and you are abnormal, weird, “yeTigray tewelaj” or a sell out!. A “Kaba” a woman should wear comfortablly, or crave to wear comfortablly simply because it is expected of her!! That’s what “should” does. It makes things an obligation instead of a choice, having them a duty instead of a joy, and not having them an act of rebellion or a curse! And motherhood is a duty as real and threatening to every Ethiopian woman as death. No wonder most women lose their desire to live when they find out they are unable to bear children! And you hear them asking heart-breakingly what they did to God to deserve this.

What you won’t find them asking is if motherhood was for them, or if it is what it’s cracked up to be. For we have all seen mothers who fall short of the title. Mothers we wondered over and associated allegorical characters to the behavior of. Mothers who would tell you, if you dare ask them to bear their souls without pretentions or illusions of living upto the “Ethiopian mother’s” image, how they got into it “bridled as a horse”, helpless & voiceless against the tide (that we are). How it has fallen short of it’s promise and their expectations of it! And you would have realized how although we need mothers to make sure life continued, if life must continue, motherhood isn’t for every woman. Like every other career, there are those who are good at it & those who aren’t. I personally believe if motherhood (like marriage, teaching and movie making) was done by only those who knew how to, there wouldn’t have been so many screwed up kids (students and soaps) in the world. Not to mention the welcome decrease in the actual number!

Take my cousin Netsanet for example.