Five Years of Love and War

The war turned five today, just under two weeks before Max also hits that milestone. Five years of violence, death and hate, sharply contrasted with five years of unadulterated joy and love.

After the war began in March 2003, a very pregnant Cathleen and I marched against it in Manhattan, and I coined my favorite rally chant: "the war is stupid, you dumbass motherfuckers" (sing it in a cadence, you'll get it). Just before Max's first birthday, we again marched in Manhattan, right outside our apartment, and I affixed a poster to Max's stroller that read, "War bad, pacifier good." Later that year, I again marched in Manhattan in protest of the Republican National Convention, but naptime I think precluded Max's attendance. We didn't march again until last year -- the almost inconceivable fourth anniversary of the war -- when Max and I traveled down to D.C. in a minivan with Joseph, Miriam, Claudia and Joseph's father David. Max and Miriam ran around on the lawn in front of the Capitol while the rally speakers denounced the impending "surge." This year Max is with Cathleen in Rochester (her first "Slipping" reading!), and I was trying to figure out a way to get back to D.C. while setting up childcare for Eliza, but when I realized that I stood a decent chance of getting arrested at the day of action and civil disobedience that United for Peace and Justice had been planning, I figured that I couldn't risk that with a two-year-old waiting for me in Brooklyn. I then thought I'd leave work early and take Eliza up to the march and vigil at Grand Army Plaza, but rainy weather interfered with those plans. And so here we are, five years into this debacle, and I'm alone with my rage tonight.

We try to teach Max about the inherent good in people, and the value of life, and across the globe we are locked into a war that has taken over half a million lives.
We work to instill in him an understanding of the importance of telling the truth, and we are mired in a war that was begat by one long lie after another.
"No hitting," we say. "If you are angry or frustrated, we talk it out in this family. It is OK to be angry, or to be frustrated because you can't have what you want. It is not OK to hurt someone else."

Every day I tell him I love him at least two or three times, and it is the last thing he hear's from me before he goes to bed at night.

I hope the war ends before he can even understand that it began.