Lving in coronavirusworld 49: Mothers' Day

5/10

Checkpoint

Mothers Day

One of the week’s pleasures, it's important to create things to look forward to, is my Sunday morning visit to the deli across the street to get a Sunday Times and bring it back to read with coffee.  Six days a week, it’s an online Times “Morning Briefing” but one day a week I want a real paper. Especially for the Magazine Crossword. Am I a crosswords guy? She asked, Not really. But the Sunday one….I’ll work at it all week trying  to find the offbeat random key that will open up the puzzle. They never really tell you, you have to figure it out.  When I get it done, it always feels like one of  life’s small victories.

Our regular Sunday family ZOOM visit has become another time to look forward to. There is the usual sharing of recipes, grumbling about current realities and the general absurdity of life in the US.  My four year old grandson has been watching Charlotte’s Web which led to a question about Charlotte’s death. His father explained that it’s something that happens to all living things. But not us, he replied. Yes, us too, his father said. But no, said my grandson, Das ist verboten. (That is forbidden.). Our mortality is not so easy to contemplate.  I now think about it every day.

We're talking about what we miss.  It's hard not to say everything. My middle son says that  it's what makes  New York New York that enables us to tolerate paying exhorbitant amounts of money for tiny living spaces and put up with all we have to put up with to live here and when that's all gone, what are we left with? What's the point?

This is Mothers' Day. I made cards for the mothers in my life and mailed them. Included for my mom a new mask with a special "nose" design. As friends' parents fall victim to the virus, I'm all the more thankful for my mom, even  more sad that she is sequestered away from us.

I think of all the years at West Park we would read Juliet Ward Howe's dramatic proclamation and the origins of this day in war resistance and its taming into another Hallmark moment.  This year I'd be happy to settle for that. (see below)

My friend Mili hosts her birthday party on ZOOM.  It starts with a dance party which looks  a bit like the old disco dancers on Laugh In.  Or Hollywood (Dancing) Squares. We all share in a toast to her, I even have a little Serbian rakia left.  I bring my friend Zeljko’s Saban statue to the party. 

Saban

(Saban Bajramovic, was a Serbian singer known as the King of Romani music. He's the subject of Zejlko’s new film. I am Saban ). Ever creative, Mili  has brought us together for shared warmth at just the right time. We share stories, memories, laughs and a drink or two. 

                                                               "I am Saban" trailer

I’m concerned about our Wednesday reflection  group’s use of the word tribe, and tribal so I share some thoughts about  that with them. 

Friends:

I have become increasingly uncomfortable with our\use of the words tribe and tribal with an assumption of inherent negative meaning. To respond anecdotally:

1. I have an old friend who was raised on a Native American reservation. When there is an important decision to be made within his circle, he calls for a tribal council. For him this means all who have made a serious commitment, have invested themselves and have a stake in a particular community or project. In the meeting, all voices are of equal value as the group moves towards consensus. 

2.During my time in Oklahoma, one of my elders, a postal clerk in Tulsa, was the former chief of the Pawnee nation. In his tribal life, he was respected and honored as the leader of his nation. On several occasions I was honored, to be a guest at the annual Pawnee National Pow Wow and Reunion, a several day event every July. . All who came contributed to a common pot from which supplies were purchased for the gathering. Regardless of one's socio-economoic status in the white world, here all families shared equally from the same supply of food. Visitors from other tribes were welcomed at the Pow Wow dance with much exchange of gifts, including blankets, as signs of mutual respect and hospitality. That's what tribal means to me, welcome, warmth, generosity, hospitality

We seem to have unintentionaly fallen into what I call a case of privilege and power determining the meaning of  metaphor. (That might be an interesting conversation to have. .). Maybe we can ask Norm about the Tribes of Yahweh. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_K._Gottwald)

And, let us   seek  creatively to find new metaphors for our experience of  the division we are all  living through

It’s a colder night, enough scattered rain drops to discourage outdoor meditation. Harlem Tavern has joined the ranks of the re-opened and finally removed the St. Patrick’s decorations that had become so depressing. The police are running a check point and I’m not sure why. 

And there’s a small group of people waiting  outside Bean & Barely. Time for an end of the day gin and tonic.                        

                                                                   ****

Juliet Ward Howe's Mothers' Day  proclamation

Again, in the sight of the Christian world, have the skill and power of two great nations exhausted themselves in mutual murder. Again have the sacred questions of international justice been committed to the fatal mediation of military weapons. In this day of progress, in this century of light, the ambition of rulers has been allowed to barter the dear interests of domestic life for the bloody exchanges of the battle field. Thus men have done. Thus men will do. But women need no longer be made a party to proceedings which fill the globe with grief and horror. Despite the assumptions of physical force, the mother has a sacred and commanding word to say to the sons who owe their life to her suffering. That word should now be heard, and answered to as never before.

Arise, then, Christian women of this day ! Arise, all women who have hearts, Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears ! Say firmly : We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall 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, 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 bosom of the 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 out dishonor, nor violence vindicate 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 council.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take council with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, man as the brother of man, each bearing after his own kind the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women, without limit of nationality, may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient, and at 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.

—Julia Ward Howe                                                                     ¹⁸

1870