Tannishblog

To all Mommies, Grannies, Bubies, Nanas, and aspiring mothers: Wishes for the best of days.

Apart from a celebration of home makers and nurturers, Mothers Day is a celebration of women. Not being one, I go out on a limb by saying motherhood and the potential of childbirth is a central theme in all women’s lives. The mechanics of human reproduction is the domain of the woman, and this day attempts to honor that great responsibility all women must bear. Men would be wise to acknowledge the awesome burden a mother is subject to and lend as much help and support as possible.

Besides all that, Mother’s Day is a call for peace. During the Civil War, Julia Ward Howe, the author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, recoiled in horror at the carnage of a whole generation of young men. Her response was to promote a Mother’s Day for Peace, which we are celebrating today.

She saw some of the worst effects of the war — not only the death and disease which killed and maimed the soldiers. She worked with the widows and orphans of soldiers on both sides of the war, and realized that the effects of the war go beyond the killing of soldiers in battle. She also saw the economic devastation of the Civil War, the economic crises that followed the war, the restructuring of the economies of both North and South.

In 1870, Julia Ward Howe took on a new issue and a new cause. Distressed by her experience of the realities of war, determined that peace was one of the two most important causes of the world (the other being equality in its many forms) and seeing war arise again in the world in the Franco-Prussian War, she called in 1870 for women to rise up and oppose war in all its forms. She wanted women to come together across national lines, to recognize what we hold in common above what divides us, and commit to finding peaceful resolutions to conflicts. She issued a Declaration, hoping to gather together women in a congress of action.

How can we celebrate life, as exemplified through motherhood, without demanding an end to bloodshed? How many mothers today will sit in sorrow because their brave soldier children will not be home? How many will cry because our recent wars have killed their offspring, or because their adult children came back from Iraq damaged and disabled? How many mothers are serving overseas that can’t connect with their kids at home: Too many.

Remember today as a Day of Peace. Hug your mother, or cherish her memory, look upon your daughters and see the future mommies they may become. Work for a world there mothers can celebrate their day in a peaceful world with their kids, grandkids and all loved ones. And send a prayer of support to mothers whose day will not be so wonderful.