December 18, 2023
In the months after I had my babies, all I’ve wanted to do is hold them and stare at their brand new faces. I am back in that phase with my littlest right now, who is still in the newborn stage. Holding a warm, cozy baby with soft fuzzy hair was a new thing to me as a mom. I love to hear their little grunts, and watch them try out faces. Round, chipmunk cheeks are so much effort to push into a gummy smile, and yet my baby smiles a lot, especially when she sees her family members. She swings her head around, a bit out of control, to take in the whole world, needing frequent breaks for her neck hidden by baby chunkiness. I like to watch her try really hard to make sense of her hands. She likes to hold her fists up like she’s about to fly like Superman. I can tell she has powerful legs. She uses them to work on turning her whole body into a roll. As they build strength it brings me incredible joy to watch them sometimes fearfully rolling out of control, and other times triumphantly taking steps. When she falls asleep in my arms, I have trouble putting her down. Even as I write this, she is on my lap.
At this point, the baby doesn’t have a sense of self. As far as she’s concerned, she is still part of me. I’m sure it feels much different to her than the warm tank of amniotic fluid she was just swimming around for months, quite literally kicking my organs out of the way to make room! But the current consensus on developmental milestones is that they don’t really start getting a sense they are separate people until around 6 months, when they can show signs of separation anxiety. It is hard for me to stop thinking about her if someone else has her for even an hour or two. That hasn’t really gone away with the toddler either. For nearly a year, they were literally part of me, and birth makes little difference. They are part of me. To me, having children is like having a piece of your soul outside of your body. It resides in tiny bodies that don’t understand yet that they aren’t invincible.
Of course, I just take it for granted that I will always be here for them, as should be the rule. I don’t think of it as a special kindness to me that I GET TO sit with my babies and stare at them, that I GET TO watch them grow up, and that I GET TO be with them. I’m their mom. Of course I get to do these things, right? There are a lot of situations around the world in which this is not the case. One of the most urgent is the horror Palestinian families are dealing with that the American tax dollars to Israel have created.
Palestinian moms don’t get these kindnesses, even as “The Palestinian people are arguably the most pampered people by international aid organizations in the history of the world” according to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 800 babies are being born per month in Gaza, almost double the usual, and so many are premature because of the stress and constant bombing attacks from Israel. Like me, hundreds of mothers decided to grow their families early this year. Like me, they got clothing, bedding, and other must-haves ready for their little miracles, excited to welcome them into the world. They suffered the pregnancy pains and the helplessness from not being able to move as quickly or well with a baby bump. Palestinian moms are under constant threat under the Israeli Defense Forces. Israeli leaders openly call Palestinians animals, and they say that their ultimate goal is to remove them completely from the area. I can’t imagine the constant terror under bombing campaigns and the strength to keep struggling for my family’s survival with the Israeli military pointing guns at us. It is a struggle when the electricity goes out for a short time, or the water is off for maintenance. I feel like a bad mom when I don’t have meals prepared when I believe they ought to be. For the Palestinian mothers, having anything to eat at all is a struggle, many reporting starvation conditions. Their struggle is to have any water at all. Those who have had very premature babies in hospitals that are short on incubators and have had the electricity cut by the Israelis all expect their children to die. Israel simply ordered 1 million people to flee their neighborhoods, even those people in their major hospital (which is also being starved of basics like electricity).
This is inhuman, and the Israelis must be stopped from continuing to carry out this genocide, especially while using U.S. money and bombs to do it. We need to join the international community in condemning Israel for its decades of aggression against the native Palestinians, and stop the violence for the sake of thousands of regular families just trying to survive.
I went to a vigil to stand with other Milwaukeeans for peace and humanity to be brought back to our Palestinian brothers and sisters. Me and my kids walked through Milwaukee’s beautiful Cathedral Square lined with Christmas trees decorated by local school kids. Small children were enjoying running around the playground there, others going for walks. The vigil was lead by church groups demanding peace. We had some group readings, we lit our candles together, and we sang “This Little Light of Mine.” There were over 30 people in the middle of a weekday. I stood in front of a tree full of prayer cards of dead Palestinian children while my own are happy and healthy. It’s just demonic for our tax money and our bombs to have been used to destroy these children and to terrorize all of the parents who ought to be able to sit and stare at their little cuddly little babies like I get to. It is the right of every parent to do so, and this right ought to be internationally protected. Every day the Israelis continue to indiscriminately bomb and shoot Palestinians is a horrific shame on all of humanity.
From the river to the sea, Palestine must be free!
Peace in Palestine!