International Women's Day in a time

of war - war in more than one place and on more than one front.

I was opening the front curtain this morning just at the time that the paediatrician across the street was getting her two boys into the car to drop them at school.   Like all children they had obviously forgotten things. H... , the younger of the two, rushed back inside and came out clutching a large piece of paper. His mother hurried him into the car, checked his safety belt was properly fastened and they were off. 

There would have been similar scenes over thousands of households all over the city this morning. It is considered "normal".

I suppose I considered the same sort of thing "normal" when I was a mere kitten too. For most of my school life my mother was a full time teacher and then school principal. She worked hard. My brother and I saw very little of her. My sisters were taught by her - but Middle Cat remembers her as "not being like Mum in the classroom". 

I have been thinking of all this in the past week or so as I have watched footage of yet more mothers trying to get their children out of yet another war zone. I have watched women trying to get children who are not their own out too.

Women do extraordinary things during wars. It is something we all too often fail to acknowledge. They will go without food, without sleep, without protection for themselves in order to save children. They will pass their own children to complete strangers in the hope this will keep them safe from the greater harm of staying where they are. It is something I would like to think I understood but I know, not having children of my own, I don't understand. I know I would take care of any child passed to me. I would do it to the best of my ability but I could never be "mother". 

When I hear stories of mothers harming their children I wonder what has gone so wrong that they would do this. It isn't "normal". I think "normal" is the nurturing instinct - the one which is concerned with the very survival of the human race.  Men will never understand that in the same way. They don't carry the future inside themselves. 

To all the mothers out there doing the best you can to care for your children - I salute you.