When
I was growing up, I lived with a constant nagging fear
of the entire planet being destroyed in a nuclear war.
It was the tail end of the Cold War, and I was afraid
that some cocksure leader of the USA or USSR would get
an ichy trigger finger and press the damnable Button and
nukes would go flying across the globe and we would all
die. When Reagan was elected, I was a teenager. I was
already resigned to dying in nuclear hell-fire, but then
I began to fear that if I didn't get nuked I was going
to be drafted and sent off to fight in some bullshit Third
World War (Or WWIII if you like, but I imagined it being
fought in the Third World.) I actually asked my ministers
about what it meant to be a Concientious Objector, what
did I have to do to earn that label and the benefits I
could gain from it (i.e. not get drafted.). "You
have to believe in Peace," they told me. That's it?
I guess it settled in with me that to
be a Concientious Objector, I had to not want to kill
people, not want to go to war, not want to be in a war,
and not want there to be a war at all. This was not
a stretch for me, I didn't want to kill people, nor
did I want other people to kill people. Killing other
people just didn't jive with me, and I didn't think
I wanted to be around someone who did want to kill other
people, or felt that it was okay for people to be killed
by other people. Murder - not a family value, know what
I'm saying?
Margaret Eleanor Hicks (on right
with friend), around age 6, 1920.
Now
we are in the middle of the longest armed conflict (involving
the USA) since Vietnam. We have been at war since the
day my daughter was born, and we have not been at peace
since. My daughter will be four years old in January.
My daughter is growing up in a world at war. She knows
the word "War". She says, "People die in
wars." Its not from me, not entirely. She hears it
on the radio, she hears it on the street. We are a nation
at war.
My grandmother, Margaret Eleanor Hicks,
used to tell me about when she was four years old in
Detroit and the bells all across the city began ringing
one night, over and over, all night long.
Eleanor Rae Hardy (on the left,
with a friend) age 3, 2005
She asked her father what the
bells were ringing for, and he told her that the war was over,
and the bells were ringing for peace. It was 1918.
I would so much like to be able to tell
my daughter the same thing when she is four years old.
