"The next few days are critical," said the news man on CBS Nightly News this summer, my baby sleeping beside me as I watch what's happening with North Korea and Kim Jong-un joking about little presents he'll send out to the world for us, the U.S. My baby naps, the only things she knows is the warmth of love and safety, while men talk of nuclear weapons sandwiched between hurricane slices of bread.
Boys play at war, and at 3:00 in the morning, all I can do is lie sleepless in the horror and helplessness of it.
Any woman who has looked at her baby knows the depths of loyalty, the humanity that binds us. I think about another mother like me, maybe past her prime birthing years but still blessed with a baby, maybe in North Korea, looking down at her baby at 3:00 in the morning, wanting nothing more than to not be thinking about anything but the love of motherhood. Maybe she is in the middle of fear, too, tracing the outline of her baby's soft cheek, the reality of war not a thought experiment but an actuality because of boys.
Any woman who has looked into her baby's eyes could also consider the absolute real chance of death, for her, for this baby. These men cannot really know that it doesn't matter where one lives: a mother and her baby are sacred, and no mother with a baby would drop a bomb or even joke about it on another mother with a baby. Let's get real: that's what we're talking about here.
I cannot think of a cause that would supersede the love I have for my children. What mother would sacrifice her baby willingly for a cause dreamed up by men?
There is only the safety of children. That is the only thing: the safety of children. Mothers know this. Fathers, you too, but there are too many of you who forget and choose to take up other causes, which makes me think you don't know in the same way mothers do.
Of course there have been so many mothers throughout history who have sacrificed their children to war. All who die fighting--these are heavy sacrifices for the mothers. But did the mothers choose that? No. Mothers will always choose safety for their children in the hopes of happiness, and it is only through the force of circumstance that a mother must submit to acceptance of the sacrifice of a child.
These boys masquerading as men who are toying with war would do well to listen to the mothers, to think about the safety of all children, no matter where those children live.
No matter where those children and their mothers live.
It's 3:00 a.m. and I'm with my baby. I don't want to drop a bomb at 3:00 a.m. on another woman with her baby, tired but so in love with the miracle of that small life. It's enough to make me want to deliver a spanking to the men who are even thinking of messing with this sacredness anywhere on this Earth. Even those men who are old enough to be my grandfather cannot hold in their bodies the wisdom I have now because I am a mother, because any mother knows that safety is paramount. People can live where they live and believe what they want, but Lord, please, mothers must be allowed to live in safety with their children and then men would do well to keep their ideas about bombs that kill mothers and their babies to their damned selves.
