Others' Mother's

As embarrassing as this is to admit, it was just about one year ago that I learned the origin of Mother's Day began with a peace movement. It was one of those head-slapping moments. Of course! Who first and foremost but those that put their entire being into raising a child would fight for peace? It explains my own mother's change of political heart before she died. When we would talk politics leading up to the 2004 election, she told me that she voted for Nixon because he promised to end the Vietnam War and then shortly after he won office, he carpet-bombed Cambodia. So when the Bush administration pushed to go to war in Iraq, she knew better than to trust their word. As Dubya McAWOL really meant to say..."Fool me once shame on me, fool me twice shame on you." Or a better example of wisdom might be from Spanky of The Little Rascals: 'You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool Mom'.
'
Imagine what Iraqi mothers have been experiencing over these many years. Their child goes off to school, some fundamentalist extremist asshole sets off a car bomb as that child seeks to enter the school's doors and in an instant the love of their life is dead. Or what about the victims of the forgotten war in Afghanistan? Their daughters witness fundamentalists executing their teachers for teaching girls. How do you deal with that? How do you deal with telling your daughter her teacher was murdered for teaching her? And how (or do) you continue her education? Iraq's universities are under constant attack and many professors have been assassinated. Do Iraqi and Afghani mothers encourage their children to further their education at such a risk? Or do they keep them holed up at home ensuring their children never realize any of their dreams and condemning them to a life of poverty?

In many a third world country; large corporations have destroyed the environment, enslaved the populace into forced labor, bought off the local governments, murdered leaders who wanted to do right by the people and left mothers with only polluted water and arid land with which to feed their children. If those children don't die of hunger, they die from diarrhea from the bacteria in their water or from AIDS because US foreign aid currently under the Bush Administration, forbids funding condom education. In some of these regions; government militias easily manipulate the populace with fear, rape and murder of the children. Or they kidnap the children and force them into becoming murderers themselves. What goes through the mind of a woman in Darfur while she in the throes of pain during the delivery of her child? Does she dare hold any hope of a future for that child's life? Does she worry the boy she has just brought into this world may someday kill her?

In China and other third world nations, mothers and their children work seven days a week, 14 hours a day... sometimes till they drop dead, so Americans can buy cheap crap at the local ExploitMart. My brother is a VP for a shipping company, he told me that the United States' largest export is used paper that is recycled and made into boxes in China to hold all that cheap crap they manufacture and ship to the U.S. Yep, you heard right. America's largest export is our own waste. Do the poor sweatshop worker mothers of China hold their newly born infants on their chest, breathing in their scent, offer a pinky finger for their newborn to grip and kiss their fragile forehead while feeling hope this child will get to live a good life? If so, how long does that hope last till their reality sets in?

My mom was always there to give me hope and champion or give guidance on whatever I wanted to do. And save for legality or common sense, she never put any restrictions on what I could do with my life. She was an Irish-American female force of nature that didn't take any crap and was, as she characterized herself , 'a lioness protecting her cubs'. But, save the occasional 'Liver For Dinner Night' my siblings and I never went hungry. Though I know she would have, she never had to throw her body on top of any of us to shield us from a car bomb. Being an American citizen whose parents made it into the middle-class after emigrating two generations prior, she knew her kids would never sew cheap garments 100 hours a week to make pennies a day.

So since this coming Sunday is Mothers Day, I hope that anyone reading my guilt ridden rant (Duh! it is Mother's Day, what else did you expect?) decides to take some time to honor the true origin of this day and do something about peace and helping all the 'other mothers' that deserve to share the same hope we here in America do, for their own children. Oh yeah... and don't forget to comb your hair, tuck in your shirt, take out the garbage, clean your room and shut the door already! You weren't born in a barn were you?