A Peace-Filled Mother's Day To All DU Mothers & All Mothers Everywhere

:hug:

Hekate

Thanks for posting this, Hissyspit!

:)

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4942/

I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier

Ten million soldiers to the war have gone,

Who may never return again.

Ten million mothers' hearts must break,

For the ones who died in vain.

Head bowed down in sorrowin her lonely years,

I heard a mother murmur thro' her tears:

Chorus:

I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier,

I brought him up to be my pride and joy,

Who dares to put a musket on his shoulder,

To shoot some other mother’s darling boy?

Let nations arbitrate their future troubles,

It’s time to lay the sword and gun away,

There’d be no war today,

If mothers all would say,

I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier.

(Chorus)

What victory can cheer a mother’s heart,

When she looks at her blighted home?

What victory can bring her back,

All she cared to call her own?

Let each mother answer in the year to be,

Remember that my boy belongs to me!

I've been reading it and saying it, for the last seven years...

"I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier!!"

But he is and there's nothing I can do to change that now.

There wasn't anything I could have done back then.

But he's also a musician and smart and cares about his fellow human beings...

He just had a birthday, May 11th. It was almost Mother's Day, the day he was born.

He's bound and determined to uphold his end of the contract, as full of holes as that contract is...

It breaks my heart and brings tears to my eyes but I love my soldier sons.... always will.

Not all my sons are soldiers though. ;) And the youngest will never be, despite arguments

from men telling me that I should encourage him to enlist. IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN!!!!!!

I didn't raise them and influence them all alone. Many others had input and that's the part

that is hard to deal with... that others turned their heads, in a direction away from where I am.

But it's almost over for my oldest (fingers crossed) and he will be free and clear, in a year + ...

But the war drums are close enough to hear again and he is at the tail end of the eight year contract.

And stop-loss is just a paper signed and then he'll be away...

I hope that doesn't happen...again.

Thanks for the poem. :hug:

:hug:

From one mother to another.

For all the things you've had to go through, every Mother has earned this recognition.

Well done, thank you. I'll forward this to my own mom.

Thanks.

I like that photo. Beautiful!

My order from Spring Hill came in the mail yesterday. I got their red and pink hedge roses. So today I will sit at the edge of the woods, and watch the kids plant what will soon be a nice addition to our rose gardens.

I looked out my back door yesterday to find that a pink climbing rose at the back fence had inexplicably been joined by a deeper red one:



Another beautiful volunteer.

:)

I think it was taken in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan somewhere...

Mother's Day Proclamation - 1870
by Julia Ward Howe

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."

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.


Mother's Day was originally intended to be an ANTI-WAR message!


just goes to show... Moms rock!

:thumbsup:

I can't, though. I wish my mom, and all strong, loving, nurturing mother-figures a peace-filled mother's day.

I wish the mother of my grandson, and all those pseudo-mothers whose abuse permanently harms our children, and thus our future, a quick trip to the hell they have earned.

May my grandson not grieve for the absence of his mother on this day. May he not lash out in incoherent rage, echoing back the physical, verbal, and emotional abuse he suffered his first 4 years of life under her "care." May all the love, consistency, safety, stability, counseling, and care we have surrounded him with the last 3 years finally begin to make a difference, and to heal the rage and grief that drives his days. May he, and all abused children, find peace on this day.