Nothing Like a Mothers Love

Travel is a common theme in my life -- probably started with the family vacation we took every year when I was young. But in all my travels, I have seen another universal theme, a common symbol of unity, love and Peace.

Mom. She's got the big love. From Ethiopia to Seattle, mothers protect us - the offspring. When we grow up, we may leave her house to build our own, and her cooking to add more flavors to our palates, but she's still the woman that held us to her breast, nurturing and cooing to us, her most-loved child. She would do anything to protect her child.

Koko is not a mother. I'm fascinated by her. She's a 33-year old lowland gorilla who, since infancy, has been working with Dr. Francine "Penny" Patterson. With her ability to "talk" to Penny using sign language and a vocabulary of more than 900 words, she speaks of having a baby. Often. Achingly. Her motherly gentleness and protective instincts were displayed when she got a kitten as a companion. This 280 pound ape cradles the kitten, stroking it and purring to it while signing "baby, baby" over and over.

Even Koko, childless, mourns the lost opportunity. But she also doesn't have the heartache of lost children due to the nonsense that goes on in the world today -- drugs, murder, mental torment and wars.

If mothers ruled the world, would there ever be another war? Not if my mom ruled? And probably not yours? Disputes would be settled over a cup of tea, and everyone would end up laughing. On The Cat's Cradle (a favorite blog,) I read this story about Julia Ward Howe's first Mother's Day in 1870 called Mother's Peace Day. Julia, author of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, wrote a proclamation which begins with:

Arise then...women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts!

Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:

"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,

Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,

For caresses and applause.

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn

All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.

We, the women of one country,

Will be too tender of those of another country

To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

Julia Ward Howe, Mother's Day Proclamation, 1870

Imagine all the mothers of the world stopping their sons, husbands, and fathers. All the mothers of the Israelis, the Palestinians, the Koreans, the Japanese; all the mothers of the the blacks, the whites, the straights, the gays; all the mothers of the Republicans and the Democrats . . . All the mothers saying:

Enough. Enough! Wouldn't you like some tea.

David Perdew
Writer / Photographer / Consultant
http://www.WorldWantingPeace.com
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/1883095
http://www.60DaysTo100K.com http://catcradle.typepad.com/the_cats_cradle/