Because This Is What Mothers Do

At 4.30pm I begin counting down to 6pm. Because this is what mothers do.

I swirl the dinner on the hob and slurp cautiously from the ladle, worrying that my new curry recipe is too spicy. But that’s it. In this moment, that’s my only worry.

My son appears, dressed up as a ninja with a forest green, cracked army-helmet on his head. Nerf bullets congregate at my feet. He’s pretending to get the enemy, he says. But that’s it. He’s just pretending.

He uses the language I know he heard in his history lessons. But that’s it. It’s just history.

My eyes glance at the clock again. 83 minutes until my husband’s voice will echo from the hallway and he’ll scoop up/fist pump children on his way to embrace me. Friday is a later homecoming. But that’s it. He’s just late.

I scroll through pictures on the news. But that’s it. They’re just pictures.

The baby whimpers at my calve. I raise him up and he slots his forehead into the crook of my neck, like a familiar jigsaw puzzle. He sighs, satisfied with my attention. But that’s it. It’s just attention he needs.

I kneel down, my body buckling under the weight of a heavy heart. A 3 hour flight away, a mother is thinking about her dinner and her husband and her children. This is what mothers do. But for her, there’s more.

Her husband has been conscripted. Or he put her on a bus to safety. Or the smell of smoke and singed-flesh fills her nostrils. Or her son learned attack drills at school. Or she abandoned her car to flee the country on foot. Or she’s cowering in a shelter with a baby at her breast, while the shelling above blows her world apart.

I want to tell myself they’re pretending, too. I want to block it all out, but I can’t. Because, although divided by borders, we’re united by our humanness. And my privilege does not render me powerless. I can’t afford to let hopelessness pull me under. So I sit up, and cry out. There’s an all-knowing God listening, you know?

I mourn with the mothers and I beg Him to intervene and save souls and hold them close and make all things new.

And then I do the next right thing in front of me and finish making the dinner. Because this is what mothers do.