ElementalMom

I just heard a few minutes ago that Cindy Sheehan has resigned from the peace movement. This blog on Daily Kos explains why.

I don’t even know where to begin. I have watched her get attacked over and over, in increasingly ridiculous, harsh, and anatomically impossible ways, all for saying that a mother’s grief trumps a politician’s greed. Well it appears today, the bad guys have won. Cindy will no longer speak for mothers.

I am devastated by this.

I cannot imagine what it must be like to send off a living boy full of ideals about what he’s doing, and receive back a telegram telling you that your baby is gone forever. And to have the President who sent him off to die refer to you as “Mom” while your grief is still raw (does it ever get unraw? Ever? I can’t imagine that it would.) Maybe Cindy escallated, but maybe, just maybe, that man in the white house could have talked to her. Just once. Maybe he could have answered the question about what noble cause Casey died for. How hard would that have been to do? It’s not like he was constrained to tell the truth; he could have said anything. But in the end, for whatever reasons, he would not face her.

Personally, I arrived at the same conclusion Cindy did, but I did it years ago. This America is not the America I was raised to believe in. The Federalist Papers didn’t address the unchecked greed, the viciousness, the stupidity, I see around me. When my husband resisted voting because it was pointless, I encouraged him to come with me, to make it a family outing. And then George W. Bush turned that into a complete farce. Who won the election? Who knows? Not us, any more.

Where will my family end up? I have no idea, but I know it isn’t here, and I believe in my heart that while staying and trying to inspire change from within is a noble sentiment, I, like Cindy, figured out a little while back that this empire needs to topple; it cannot be fixed, not with all our might. And if this nation is going to be as violent, as vitriolic, and as hateful to the grief of a mother as it has been to Cindy, I have to ask if it’s worth being saved at all. And I find myself being very, very sad that the conclusion I come to, is “no”.

I do not think Cindy started out to be a voice of mothers, but to me, that’s what she ended up being. A mother who stood the hell up and fought the senseless death of her beloved child in a stupid war. I hope to God that I will have the same grace, the same strength, the same courage of coviction, and the same spark, that Cindy Sheehan has, should the time ever come when I am tested as harshly as she has been tested.

Thank you, Cindy Sheehan. You’ll never read these words, but I want them out there, to try to counteract, just a little, all the hate you’ve had to soak up. You have been a beacon to me, of what it can mean to be a mother of boys, and I will admire you forever.

This is what our 15 minutes of fame looks like. Only it’s more like five minutes.

In all the craziness that’s been going on lately, I completely forgot to blog about us being on television. I remember a time when that would have been a really big deal, but these days, it was just something that happened. So much for my personal mindfulness, huh?

Anyway, a really awesome woman at ABC Channel 7 News called up, and asked about doing a segment on EC. Of course we said yes, but I was intending to set her up with kids who were still doing EC. You know, since Kestrel’s been a grad since 18 months or so, and at nearly two years, he’s been done with potty training for a while.

Total silence on the phone.

I‘m such a dork, I completely forgot that most kids aren’t even beginning potty training by then. Once you’ve been doing EC for a while, your world view of such things changes pretty completely. So the segment, as you can see if you watch it, is about Kestrel, and my pal Laura’s youngest, Adrian, who’s 3 months.

Overall, we’re thrilled. It was sane, balanced, factual, unlike a lot of the sensationalist nonsense that the EC community has seen. The producer really went out of her way to create a piece that will intrigue people, and hopefully even motivate them. Apparently there are a number of pregnant women at the station, and the producer’s hope was that some of them will see this and go for it. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed. Let us know what you think, and if you’re so motivated, let ABC 7 know what you think as well.

Usually, the boys have popsicles in their bath. It’s a long standing tradition of mine; I used to love popsicles in the bath, the contrast between hot soapy water and cool fruity popsicle was something I savored from my own childhood, so it’s something I wanted to give them. And rather than buying corn-syrup-sweetened quiescently frozen confections of death, we bought molds and make our own popsicles, out of whatever fruit juice the boys like best at the time.Today, Rowan was tuckered out and taking an especially long nap, and Kestrel got impatient (no, really! Kes! Who knew?), and asked for his bath, alone. This is kind of a big deal; normally Kestrel is stuck to Big Brother like glue, so going offroad like this is kinda strange. But little did I know, the strangest was yet to come.

Kestrel asked for “possicle”, and I presented him with an apple-juice torpedo one. He slurped that down, asked for an orange one, and got that too. But he seemed… bored somehow. So on a whim, I threw in a few plain, old, square, freshwater ice cubes.

They were the total hit of bathtime. He played with them until they melted, asked for more, played with those. Held them under, held them over, raced with them on the slippery edge of the tub, flung them on the floor, picked them up, did it all over to see if it would happen different next time. Enthralled. About a dozen cubes met their watery end in the name of toddler science.

Plain water ice. All that, and yummy too. Who knew?

I’m all excited; out of the blue, my manager assigned me the wrap-up piece for the JavaOne Conference this year. Here’s the piece:

http://java.sun.com/javaone/sf/2007/articles/weekinreview.jsp

Check it out! And please leave comments there; it’ll drive my rate up. =)

My blog is in danger of becoming an endless video review. But one of my homeschooling mommy buddies sent me this link, which as its background music, has a version of Cat Stevens’ Peace Train that I hadn’t heard before.

http://www.lucasgray.com/video/peacetrain.html

Someday, it’s going to come.

This is Teresa’s journey to HWBA3C. And while I like birthstories, and read them from time to time, this picture montage of her entire journey has had me sobbing in joy each and every time I watch it.

http://www.onetruemedia.com/otm_site/view_shared?p=2a4e81fbf0f66accb8afce

I showed it to one non-parent friend of mine, who said she was utterly unmoved. I find myself wondering if I’ve changed so much, that this impacts me so hard. Let me know what you all think.