Happy Mother’s Day

Ed’s deployment to Iraq has overlapped with another significant event in our lives. In the year that he has been gone, more of our friends have had babies than in all of our previous years put together. I have a feeling we won’t just remember 2007-08 as the year Ed went to Iraq, but also as the year the “baby boom” in our social circle began.

So, we thought we’d use this week’s post to wish a Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms we know, especially those celebrating for the first time. But, we also wanted to take the opportunity to recognize the moms who have been affected by the war in Iraq - whether we know them personally or not.

I’m embarrassed to say that this first group was almost not included. As I outlined today’s post, I thought exclusively of the American mothers. But in all honesty, the women who have been most impacted are the mothers in Iraq. As of this post, approximately 85,000 Iraqi civilians have died through violence. Simple biology dictates that every one of those people, as well as the untold dead insurgents, has (or at one point, had) a mother. In a country with a population smaller than that of the state of California, that’s a lot of women grieving for a dead child. In addition to the women who have lost children, many women have also lost husbands. These widows must now raise their families as single mothers, a state that is even harder in Iraq than in the United States, especially as the country grows increasingly repressive and dangerous for women.

So, on this Mother’s Day, please take a moment to think of the mothers in Iraq.

And now a shout-out to those moms a little closer to home – the mothers deployed, the women raising children as single parents while their spouses are deployed, and all the mothers with sons and/or daughters serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. A

s I think of my friends who are celebrating Mother’s Day today, especially those celebrating for the first time, and the joy that each day with their new child brings, I can’t help but think of the approximately 7,000 mothers in Iraq. How hard it must have been to leave their kids. Particularly those with a newborn, who are perhaps missing not just their first Mother’s Day but the first steps, the first words and all the other firsts that happen in the first year or so. Best wishes to all of those women who are away from their kids today.

I also wanted to express my admiration for the mothers who are raising families while their husbands are deployed. I can barely get myself into work on time most mornings without Ed here to make breakfast; I can’t imagine trying to get one or more kids off to school as well. Now, according to the wife of one of the soldiers Ed is deployed with, it is actually easier with kids – you’re too busy to dwell on the fact that your spouse is in a war zone. Perhaps. I don’t really feel the need to have a child and then deploy Ed again, just to settle that question. Especially since I can’t imagine how hard it must be to explain to a child why his or her daddy isn’t home. So a happy Mother’s Day to all the (hopefully, temporarily) single moms out there – doing their best with the kids while trying not to worry too much about their husbands.

And finally, a salute to the over 100,000 mothers who have a son or daughter currently serving in Iraq or Afghanistan and to those who have lost a child in the war. It’s hard enough having a spouse over there, what is it like having the child that you raised, that you spent 18 years getting safely to adulthood, fighting in a war zone?

Well, for at least one of those mothers, we have a piece of good news tonight. On Wednesday, Ed sent the following message. ‘There’s a sandstorm moving in, so they are going to try to get us out of here and down to Kuwait tonight. Unfortunately I won't have access to a commercial phone line or Internet down there so communication will be problematic. Don’t be surprised if you don’t hear from me for a few days.’

That was the last I heard. Normally, I would not consider no news from Wednesday to Sunday to be a good thing. However, in this case, I'm taking it to mean that he is in Kuwait. That’s not official, and we don’t have a date for when he will arrive back in the states, but we thought this would be a nice piece of news to share with Ed's mom on this Mother’s Day. Your son is on his way home.