Every one is ours

I was teaching at witchcamp in England almost two years ago when calling home I learned that. my housemate was going to Crawford, Texas to help publicize that a mother of a son killed in Iraq had started a peace encampment outside the president’s home. By the time I got home, Cindy Sheehan was a name that everyone knew, as well as the name of her son, Casey.

On Memorial Day, Cindy Sheehan once again made news, this time by publicly withdrawing and putting up for sale “Camp Casey”, a place than several of my friends have traveled to. I’d been thinking some about Cindy Sheehan the week before and about all the other mothers who have lost children in war. In that week, I’d been feeling how difficult it is to let go of children and also about how the direct effects and cost of the war had crept just a tad closer to my life.

I have a fifteen year old son who also has the name Casey. Our life here in San Francisco can sometimes be at a far remove from the rest of the country. A few years back Casey asked me, “Do we know any Republicans?” For all my talk about diversity, I had to ruefully admit that I couldn't think of anyone, and furthermore didn’t know anyone who supported or supports the war. Marla Ruzicka was the first and only death of someone I know personally, and she was in Iraq as a peacemaker, not a soldier. In the past weeks I’ve realized that I now know of five people connected to those I love who are serving the military in Iraq. The effects of their service are impacting my friends and family, reminding me that death is not the only casualty in war.

Meanwhile, my son is fifteen. This is the age closest in spirit to the terrible twos, when the human animal goes thru the throes of individuation, one moment clinging to the mother, the next craving separation, independence, and the flexing of the will. And of course, there are the tantrums. The last two weeks have been full of the same kind of pushing boundaries and testing limits that happened thirteen years ago. But this time, he’s bigger, smarter, and knows more bad words. Talking to my friend Thorn, she pointed out that teenagers acting badly is one way we can bear the pain of letting them leave in the coming years.

The acting out is horrible, but imagining him leaving is still a stretch. My son and his friends have adopted the close cropped hair that is the fashion these days, hair that resembles the standard army buzz. As they strut around the house, posturing with their newly developing man bodies, I occasionally feel a cold stabbing fear. One of them will go to war. Maybe all. Sometimes they are so full of hormones I've found myself saying “Boys, is there a bison or something you can hunt down and kill?” They need something to push against, a quest of some kind. What if we don’t get out of this war in Iraq? What if the draft is reinstated? What if enlisting feels like the quest for manhood they need to make? What if my Casey goes to war?

This is unimaginable. Even more so is the thought that my own son Casey could die in a war, especially in one as immoral as this one. I understand how Cindy Sheehan could leave her marriage and camp out across from the president’s house for several years. I hate to think what I would do in my grief and given that, I thank her for being so constructive, for showing the nation the face of a grieving mother who demands that no other mother lose a child for something so damn wrong. I also understand her getting tired and needing to go home, and her disappointment and disgust in Democrats who continue to okay funding for the continuance of this war. Since Cindy Sheehan camped out across from George Bush’s home, the numbers of dead sons and daughters have steadily climbed. How can you witness that and not despair? Especially when you acutely know the pain of losing a child?

My son is safely sleeping now, and this weekend he was as sweet as a fifteen year old can be. Besides the difficulty of his age, he's dealing with his father and young stepmother having just had a new baby. He’s a great kid, brought up in a remarkable community of activists and those who work for peace. Friends constantly reassure me that he won’t end up being a soldier, that I won’t lose him to war. Since his very age, since fifteen, I’ve done what I can to put an end to war. Perhaps I started out protesting to bug my parents, but they too in the end turned against the Vietnam war. I’ve marched, blockaded weapons, been to jail, signed countless petitions, wrote politicians, prayed, and done spell after spell to bring peace. And here we are, mired in a war as atrocious as that war of my childhood. In that war, it took us knowing that no son was immune to turn it around. My stomach lurches at this thought.

I’m sad that Cindy Sheehan feels so let down. But, damn, I understand it. What will it take for us to turn things around? How many sons and daughters have to die? Please Goddess, I beg you. Not mine. Not mine.