Reflections on Mother's Day

MOTHERS DAY  2013

                                             Photo Credit: Facebook Page: Imagen Perfecta

Reflections of a Mother 

Nice to greet you all on Mother’s Day. This is in tribute and celebration of motherhood. Let us offer a toast to our mothers, and to those of us who have gone through this turbulent, emotional and yet enjoyable period of seeing our children grow up. Whether you have gone through the throes of delivering a baby or not, I am sure that everybody, born a girl, has a natural maternal instinct in her. Every girl child nurtures, protects and mothers from the moment she can think for herself, which makes us all mothers through all ages…

I am thinking of a mother in the Bible, whom we haven’t given much thought to, at least I haven’t..   Jochebed, the mother of Moses: When Jochebed gave birth to a son, she saw that he was a healthy baby. Instead of letting him be killed by the Egyptians, she took a basket and coated the bottom with tar, to make it waterproof. Then she put the baby in it and set it among the reeds on the bank of the Nile river. At that same time, Pharaoh’s daughter was bathing in the river. One of her maidservants saw the basket and brought it to her.

I can link the mothers in war torn areas with this brave lady, the Mother of Moses…. in war torn areas and in refugee camps where children are born in trenches and in the most uncomfortable and dangerous situations, where soldiers have no respect for the dignity of women, where children have no safety, where life is a constant struggle to protect your children from the evil eyes of the enemy.  The Asia and the Pacific region is home to some of the world’s largest refugee situations holding almost 9.5 million people, which is 30 per cent of the global population of concern to UNHCR.

This also brings into focus the number of children who are orphaned, disabled, missing, kidnapped, abused, trafficked and scarred for life mentally and physically.

In a 1996 UNICEF report on children and war, it was reported that during the decade from 1986-1996: 2 million children were killed; 4-5 million disabled; 12 million left homeless; more than 1 million orphaned or separated from their parents; some 10 million psychologically traumatized. 15 years and many wars after this report was published, one can imagine what the statistics would be!

Children, who have survived the war in Sri Lanka, remember only the bodies that were strewn around and   kept falling all around them. They remember that they were scared even to come out and join the long queues for food being doled out in refugee camps, because they were scared that they would get shot. One girl said that all that she could remember was hunger and being scared to come out… but, her mother would get food for all of them, despite the risks involved. Of course she lost her mother to one of those bullets.. ….

Peace is not something that we can dream of till hatred and violence exists, till boundaries and political divides form obstacles, till we think of each other as aliens, (at least so it says in passports), till we speak of the supremacy of our own races and dogmas….. Life is for the living and loving….

Loving as unconditionally as a mother does….

Susan 

12 May 2013