Sometimes even our best qualities are not enough. We women certainly are good at holding things, as Maira Kalman’s book charmingly illustrates with bright images of women holding a giant cabbage, a giant book, a granddaughter—and even holding her own.
But now as a worldwide conflagration of violence has broken out, we are not even holding our own. Our voices and faces no longer appear in the news; our roles, either as peacemakers or war-mongers, conciliators, counselors, or arguers, are gone. We have become irrelevant.
We are of course still holding things, especially babies as we are bombed in a last futile attempt to take care.
What is to be done?
We do still have voices, we do still know how to write. There are letters to the editors, letters to our congressional delegations, talks no matter how unwelcome to be delivered to friends or family.
But of course, I can’t assume that anyone will agree with me about what those letters and talks insist on: An immediate, long-term cease-fire? A two-state solution to preserve once it has been achieved between the Israelis and the Palestinians?
That, to my mind, is the only just solution.
Which does not mean it is possible, or probable, or even that it will happen.
Meanwhile we’ll go on holding books and cabbages and babies—and hoping. And perhaps even praying. And perhaps saying something, or write something, into the great void where violence is drowning out the screams of the dying—as well as the almost-spring bird calls.
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