Letters in Troubled Times - Part One: Dear Mother of Young Children

Storm at a Coast with Mother and Children Fearing for Their Father's Life at Sea 

- Ringdahl

Dear Mother of Young Children,

I know what you're thinking:

How can I bring children into this hostile and dangerous world? 

To you it doesn't seem like a loving thing to do to offspring.  Calamity lurks at every corner and crossroad; at every age and stage of life.  At the very least, there are staircases and balconies, and economic woes; then there's harmful media and cellphone influences, drugs, crazy drivers, sexual promiscuity; and at the worst, terrorists, abductors, pedophiles and unmanned pools.

You are petrified some days, wondering what you and your husband were thinking when you decided to have a baby.  Why would any parent put their child through this thing called "life," especially when weekly, even daily there is some horrifying violent event that rocks you to the core.

When my first son was born, the big scare was AIDS. I remember being absolutely phobic - my emotions definitely altered by postpartum syndrome - that my two-month old son was facing a life with the possibility of contracting AIDS and dying young.

A mother's mind goes that way,

Often.

And now, with increasing domestic violence and foreign random acts of terrorism her anxiety is compounded, looming like a greenish, black tornado in the horizon.

I watched a young mother crying in church following a prayer for the Black and Blue conflicts last week.  Her husband sat beside her feebly stroking her shoulders as the church emptied out. She has two curly haired toddlers. Every tear, hand held at mouth, showed faith buckling and strength crumbling at the thought of their dim future.

But, I wonder, now that my kids are grown, if every generation has had their unstoppable giant?  Their jolting nightmare, their darkening day?

Dorothea Lange's Destitute Pea Pickers in California. Mother of Seven Children. Age 32.

In my family excavation of a myriad of century-old photos and letters, I found two such examples of past heart-fainting circumstances that mirror our fear-accelerated times.  The first is from a woman in Paris to a great-aunt here in the states, during World War I.  The second was at the time of the second world war. Both these letters emoted questions as to God's whereabouts and spoke to their dwindling faith in the face of tragedies and insecurity.

Somehow those mothers and daughters and sisters resisted the harrowing circumstances and won.  They battled their panic-tormented minds.  They bolstered their cowering spirits and arose victorious and hope-filled. They conquered wars and fires and deaths and a thousand other sufferings.

This is you, Young Mother of Small Children.

Calm your alarm.
Rest your disquietude.
Quell your panic.
Strengthen the faltering ways.

For children are their mother's saviors.

Through your fierce love and firm rearing, your children will survive, thrive and become the strain of human beings that will fire a surge of life-giving adrenaline into their world.

Sincerely,

An Older Mother of Five