Mother’s Day / Muttertag

This Sunday is Mother's Day in the U.S. as in Germany. From my desk in Hannover I can listen live via internet to my public radio station in Boston and keep up with local and national news. For the last several days the station (WBUR) has been conducting its annual Mothers' Day pledge drive, urging me to donate money to help finance its extensive news programming. As an added incentive the station will send a dozen beautiful roses to my mother or any other woman I wish to acknowledge on this special day. I ponder whether I should respond to this request—I do rely on ‘BUR’s in-depth reporting and analysis and regularly support the station when I'm in Boston. Web-based technology and my VISA card would make it possible to do so from Germany, even easy: it’s “just a mouse-click away.” But who should receive the roses? My own mother has been "on the other side" for eight years now; my sister and one daughter are biological mothers and certainly deserving of recognition…. I realize that I'm too late to order the roses anyway and click open an article I come across (news junkie that I am) put out by the feminist peace activist group Code Pink. It announces a Mother's Day anti-war protest and 24-hour vigil to be held tomorrow in front of the White House. Peace activists Cindy Sheehan and Susan Sarandon are expected to join the many mothers and others who are demanding an end to the war in Iraq. Letters will be drafted urging Laura Bush to exert her influence on her husband for an early troop withdrawal, and a full-page ad will appear in an Iraqi newspaper inviting women there to add their voices to this appeal. The Code Pink women are also soliciting contributions to support their work. I decide to point my mouse and VISA card in their direction this Mother's Day. WBUR will have to wait till the next fund drive (probably just around the corner). I know that my sister and daughters will support this choice; maybe even my mother, less politically left-leaning but a very sensible woman, would have approved.