WE ARE MOTHER.

This morning I saw Isaiah’s smile. I saw him rise from the bed and look at me– I saw him safe.

Every morning he wakes there, every morning, smiling at his mom.

And I look at him, and I don’t know who he’ll turn out to be. I don’t know how long he’ll live or what conditions he’ll face. I don’t know what his patriotism will look like, how extreme his beliefs will be.

If you’re not a mother, maybe you don’t understand. I’m not a politician, so maybe I don’t understand.

But statistics are clear: civilians are dying every day in these wars we wage, and we lose each other in the fight and battle cry.

And my baby cries because he “bonks” his head. And her baby cries because they’re running for their lives.

But I am like the mother in Gaza, and she is like me.

In the candlelit prayers, in the rocking back and forth and in the head coverings and pixie cuts,

WE ARE MOTHER.

In hide-and-seek and at breakfast time, we gather in and round and say that we are family.

Before you call someone enemy or other, before you stomp on a grave, recall who you are and how you’ve come here.

If there is peace, let it be in the likeness of our humanity, in the likeness of our place.

Someone there is a farmer like you, a friend like you, like the father in your neighborhood.

What is the power of the simile, what transformation comes from metaphor?

It enables us to see ourselves in each other, for better or for worse.

Ask yourself who you look like.

As for me, I look like a mother, and for now, it crosses all boundaries of race, religion, status or rank; it crosses oceans and I land next to the woman who, mourning, cradles her child in her tired arms.

WE ARE MOTHER.