Mother's Day 2006 (actually, from last year, but sadly, it's all the same...)
by Mary Babic

Watch out: Becoming a mother changes everything

Here’s what I’d like for Mother’s Day: No flowers. No candy. Not even a card, however hip and humorous.

Because right now, being a mother feels like the most perilous and primal job I will ever have. And a box of chocolates will do nothing to appease my passion and anger.

When my daughters slammed out of my body years ago, it seemed logical and satisfying – the end result of nine months of eating cheese and spinach, buying diaper genies and tiny sweaters. I was ready for all the changes in my life.

But I wasn’t at all prepared for what was about to happen to me.

Nobody warns you about the astounding phenomenon of becoming a mother. Oh, plenty of pundits cover the physical transformations -- the drooping boobs, the spongy abdomen-- and the fiscal implications; and the lifestyle shifts. But nobody, just nobody, lets you in on the dirty secret: mothers are different, and mothering makes you different.

Sometimes, mothering is the shiny, soft-focus experience sold in greeting cards and telephone commercials: giggles in bed, cookie dough in the kitchen, hugs in the playground. And sometimes it’s the hair-pulling, head-pounding experience you have in the morning: stumbling on legos in the bedroom, realizing homework isn’t done, hustling to find clean underwear and pull the lumps out of bed to get to school on time.

And sometimes, just sometimes, it’s as primal and bloody as life ever gets. The lioness instinct to draw a big paw around them and pull them close to the chest, to protect them from everything the world offers: cold, hunger, taunting, fast food, dirty magazines, uncomfortable shoes. Every day is a challenge to the tiny, warm world inside our house.

And lately, the challenge has grown so much bigger. Because – and it seems hard to remember, most days, when media is dominated by pop stars’ pregnancies and “American Idol” results – our country is at war. We are engaged in a deadly war in a country far away. How is this not at the forefront of our minds and hearts every day? How do the mothers bear it?

Yes, the world has grown darker and colder since 9/11; and I feel that anxiety for myself and my children. But the choices we have made in the wake of the attacks have only exacerbated what was wrong all along.

It seems like the U.S. has taken a big crayon and drawn all over the world: here are the bad guys, we can bomb them; here are the good guys, we’ll send them more bombs of their own. Black and white, evil and liberty, wrong and right.

Well, I’ll tell you what I see: mothers and children. Sometimes, I see American mothers here at home: waiting and praying for their children to come back from wars on foreign soil; watching the news and wondering how much longer their sons can dodge the snipers’ bullets. So many years of wiping tears and making macaroni and mending pants – to be cancelled by what? A man in his own land, with his own government, who does not want to be occupied any longer. Who sees her son as an enemy. The kid who played with super hero dolls and sang in the choir.

And sometimes, I see Iraqi mothers, and their children. They endured Saddam Hussein; they endured a war to oust him; they are now enduring scarce resources and ongoing violence, the daily losses of life and limbs.

So what I want for Mother’s Day this year: a commitment to peace. A commitment to find a way to get our troops out of Iraq, and to let the Iraqis create their own future. As a mother, I want to protect my children; and the children in other countries.

This isn’t a new idea. In 1872, horrified by the Franco-Prussian war, reeling from the Civil War, Julia Ward Howe created Mother’s Peace Day. She believed we needed a day set aside for people to enact the values of motherhood: values that “make for peace.” The idea was to honor what would keep mothers’ sons from being brutalized by war. It was to honor peace, and mothers’ role in keeping their children safe. She worried not just about death and destruction, maiming and disfigurement. She cared that husbands and sons were made into killers. She saw all the work of mothers undone: “Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of mercy, charity, and patience.”

She wondered “Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters, to prevent the waste of human life of which they alone know and bear the cost?” Her words ring out today.

And I’ll tell you: mothers are ready to stand up, and to say: leave my children out of it.