Peace on Earth

Last night at bedtime T1 asked me in a hushed, tearful tone if we were going to be bombed. "Do bombs happen here?" she asked.

It's one of those gut-clenching parenting moments, when you hover on the precipice of being honest, or being cheerfully dishonest. T1 is no fool, and she is very tuned in to things she sees or hears at school, or from friends, so I have to be careful in my approach to such a question.

I asked her why she was asking, and it turns out that while helping me find a "write a letter to Santa" website, she had briefly seen the CNN website, with a photo and headline of a car bombing in Algiers, and because she is really getting good at reading, was able to make out two words..."car" and "bomb."

I explained to her that the photo she saw was taken on the other side of the world, and not close to us, but my mind was thinking of the fact that somewhere in Algiers, or Iraq, or Isreal, a child just like T1 was asking her mother at bedtime why a car blew up outside her school today, or why her friend was killed when she went grocery shopping with her daddy.

T1 asked me why do people have wars. I was tempted to launch on a tirade against presidents who knowingly send our soldiers into a country where we have no real quarrel to start a war that never should have been started, but it was late, and I didn't want to keep the poor child up for hours while Mommy ranted.

This is a question that when you look at it from the simplicity of a child's perspective is something every person should ask. What good does it do? What possible good comes from bombs? It is so sad that 2000 years after Christ was born--bringing the message of peace and love to all of us--we are still keen to senselessly kill one another.

T1 asked if she or T2 would ever have to be soldiers. God help us all, I hope no mothers have to send their children to war by the time they are grown up.