Truth Thursday
This was certainly not the Mother's Day Post I was expecting to write. I have been vaguely thinking about how to talk about this most Hallmark of holidays this year without sounding saccharine and sappy. I think I succeeded last year, by paying tribute to the wide range of mothers in my life. So I was at a bit of a loss this year.
But the news about Osama Bin Laden's death has changed all that. The clarity with which I now write about Mother's Day is startling.
Like every mother in the world, I am concerned about my children's safety and their future. And for most of their young lives, I have had grave concerns about both. My youngest son was born just three weeks before 9/11, and I was nursing him on the couch as I watched the Twin Towers and the Pentagon burn.
I have never felt as threatened and insecure as I did in the days and weeks following the largest tragedy of our lives, and that feeling has never quite subsided.
On this past Sunday night, at approximately 10:49 pm, as I was watching, with bated breath, to see whether Sally Field and Beau Bridges would make it work on the soupy but irresistible "Brothers and Sisters," a Breaking News reports burst into our bedroom. Osama Bin Laden was dead.
For the next 45 minutes, we waited to hear what President Obama would say. When he did come on, and he walked, alone, down the hall of the East Wing to the podium to address the nation, he looked both incredibly old and incredibly sure. I had been watching You Tube clips earlier of him raking Donald Trump and his hairpiece over the coals from the White House Correspondent's Dinner and fully enjoyed his enjoyment of the moment; but there was no joy in this moment. It was somber, and deliberate. And he, once again, in his intelligent oratory, did our nation proud.
I am not sure I have ever believed that the bringing down of Osama Bin Laden would be the sine qua non in our war against terrorism. In fact, I have a sinking feeling that it means escalation and new and even more insidious forms of plots being hatched against America and Americans. And I personally do not believe that any one has the authority or the right to take the life of another human being, even in retaliation for evil doing or in times of war. So the celebration in the streets thing was a bit unnerving to me. I am grateful for our handling of the remains of Bin Laden with accordance to Islamic law.
But I do believe in the power of our President and our government to have the very best intentions to keep our country and our people safe. And he is doing it with both force and respect – a mighty combination.
I continue to be frightened for our futures. I sometimes wonder how I could have brought children into such a crazy world. But I know that my parents had the same worries around the Bay of Pigs, and that their parents had the same worries as our troops pushed off to fight in WWII. For as long as humankind has had the capacity to hate and to fight, this has been a frightening world. Today's technology has made the forces of evil in the world that much more powerful; but it has also given the forces of good more tools to keep the mostly innocent civilians of the earth out of the fray.
As a mother, I will never stop worrying about my children or wearing my heart on my sleeve; that is my destiny. But I am resting slightly easier this Mother's Day in the wake of our President's words and this new development in the world order. I believe, perhaps wistfully, that President Obama has made the world a little safer for all of us this week.
And that is a Mother's Day present to treasure.
photo by joelk75 via Flickr
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