Mothers and Civilizations

Someone posted the above picture on a social media platform, to which I responded as follows:
“I am not impressed by your position, title, money or how you treat others. I want to know how you treat animals.
‘The greatness of a people and their moral progress can be judged by the way they treat animals.’ ~ Mahatma Gandhi.”

And then I remembered something I told my mother when I was a child, I must have been about 11 or 12 years old. I remember it because of her reaction. She was shocked and horrified and didn’t agree with me at all, which left me very perplexed and thinking about it for a long, long, time. Eventually I forgot about it, as one does as the years go by, but every now and then, the memory pops back into my weary little head, as it did today.

Before I tell you what I told her back then as a child, you should know that I grew up in a very political family, where my parents had a subscription to The International Herald Tribune as well as Time Magazine, and where there were lots of dinner parties full of political conversations. I grew up reading the Int’l HT as well as TM, and even though I didn’t understand it all at such a young age, it did make me more aware of the world around me than most of my peers were. A lot of the articles I read were about the wars of the day. The Iraq-Iran war, the war in Lebanon, the war between the Israelis and the Palestinians. And all this was during the ever-pervasive Cold War we were living through in the Western world.

So one day, I somehow came to a conclusion and told my Mother about it. I told her that I sympathise more with animals in the wars than with all the people who suffer in the wars, even the children. Because the people have the power and the knowledge to stop the war and defend themselves, whereas animals do not, and they are entirely dependant on us humans as to whether or not they are protected from these wars. She said, but the children cannot defend themselves, and I told her that, unlike animals, the children will grow up and then they can understand what happened and work to make the world a better place and be better people themselves, who don’t fight wars. Somehow, this didn’t sit well with my Mother.

To this day, I do not know why my Mother was shocked and horrified that I said that, because I think it was quite a rational thing to say, and I still believe it. My Mother often did not understand me, and we had many fights when I was growing up. I think she found me to be too radical. She wanted me to be a nice, sweet, little girl who does as she is told, gets a good education, marries a man with a good job, and then has lots of babies, so that she could enjoy being a Grandmother. Which is actually quite ironic, because my Mother was quite a political being herself, and in my late teens and early adulthood, I did manage to have some very good talks with her about the ways of the world, and we could see more eye to eye about a lot of things. Eventually, when I became a journalist, she was very proud of me and actually took my advice on all sorts of matters. That never ceased to pleasantly puzzle me. Somehow I never got used to her actually listening to me - I had gotten so conditioned to having to defend my stance, that when I no longer needed to, because she appreciated what I said and followed my advice, it took my by surprise.

I wasn’t the child my Mother wanted, but I am the woman she greatly admired and respected. Rest In Peace, Mummy, I love you and miss you so, so much.

Namasté.