A post On Becoming Empowered Citizens described my sense that Ireland was, metaphorically, in an adolescent place ready to rebel against the authorities such as the church and state, and reclaim the power relinquished to them in absolute trust  and obedience for generations. The recent election certainly reflected a beginning.

That spoke to the way we have handled our political response to the economic crisis, however, we proved ourselves fully adult and authentic in our political identity as citizens of the Republic of Ireland.

The high points of the recent visit by the Queen have been well reported. Coverage of the ceremony at the Garden of Remembrance was as moving as my own first experience of it. I’ve little doubt the British head of state mourned the loss of her dear uncle and the British young who served their country. She did so while honouring the Irish who died.  The capacity to hold the grief on both sides is born of maturity.

I was pleased and proud to count myself as an Irish citizen most significantly during her visit to Cork. Her warm reception during the walkabout, not possible in Dublin, was a fitting appreciation for her effort to come. The maturity of calling a demonstration not in protest but in celebration of Cork’s Republican past a respectfully short distance away, was heroic and historic.

The peace process is clearly that, a process. We are not all at the same stage of acceptance, of reconciliation or even in agreement. But the gathering at Sullivan’s Quay was a respectful acknowledgment of our shared process. While accepting the reality of the democratically elected government’s invitation, there was a positive assertion of another narrative. We as citizens of this Island – whether North and South of the border each have our own narrative. Respect for each other and our stories is all that is required for the peace process to move forward.

The leadership of Sinn Féin has clearly struggled within their ranks to move their narrative to a place which allowed for the respectful treatment of this particular foreign head of state. Perhaps there is a lesson in that struggle for us all.

The words spoken were clearly well chosen and even well rehearsed on all sides. I believe that will be the way that we move the conversation forward. I would support all friends, colleagues and readers to come together and develop a language for the respectful treatment of each other’s stories. None of us can afford to take offense when it is not intended, nor can we be unthinking in our choice of language.

Let us choose our words carefully, in English and in Irish. Let us choose to be inclusive and respectful of our individual sense of our identities. Let us move forward in a way that allows us to never have to say of this period that there is much “which we would wish had been done differently or not at all.”

While we’ve never met I felt compelled to write. I read your letter in the Irish News and I am sorry it was a problem for you to have your children participate in Remembrance Day activities at school.

First let me offer that what I say is coloured by a the fact that while Irish and living here, I was reared in America. It was a gift that my grandparents left in 1908, I knew nothing of The Troubles. I am sorry for the trauma that characterised your upbringing and sadly continues into the present lives of your children. I mean to neither minimise that pain or deny its legacy. For you personally and for us all.

That said, as an American I witnessed the horror of having my peers return from service in Vietnam, wounded if not physically then spiritually by the horrors they experienced. They witnessed the destruction of entire villages – napalmed out of existence – and some barren to this day. Children raped and murdered, comrades killed and captured. Those who returned met with having their experience ignored at best and vilified at worst. Many were called baby killers by protesters meeting planes.

We did, however, learn an important lesson. While a majority of us did not support the imperialism to which you refer – by the time of the Kuwait and Iraq invasions we collectively responded with “I support the soldiers not the war”.

And this is my point. These young men and women are every woman’s sons and daughters. No woman experiences labour and delivery and sleepless nights for two decades to think of her child as mere cannon fodder.

So I would ask for you to let go of your hatred of the British for long enough to love for a moment the children of heartbroken mothers lost on the fields of Europe – 50,000 of them Irish in WWI alone. I would ask you to remember the Irish soldiers who served in the liberation of Italy – Ireland was neutral, but many served with allied forces, US and British. I would ask you to remember the Irish messenger, a former war chaplain, who brought Churchill the news that in the name of those fallen in WWI, Ireland had no more sons to give. Young Englishmen died in their places.

I proudly have a poppy and pray for peace. I wear my poppy in solidarity with the mothers who paid for my freedom with the blood of their sons and daughters. Because before I am a citizen of Ireland or America, before I am a Jew reared Roman Catholic, before all other things I am a mother. Blessed to never have had to sacrifice a child.

For an earlier blog post on Remembrance, Poppies & Homelands

November. Conscious of and indebted to the efforts of veterans worldwide – I remember. An American expat living in Ireland, in matters of politics I have pacifist leanings. I am, however, untroubled by my passion for honouring the military and sacrifices made on my behalf. Generations of sacrifices.

American veterans, British veterans, Canadian, German, Italian, Japanese, Israeli and Arab veterans, I make no distinction. Every one was called upon by his or her motherland to serve.

Service. Few of those who served or died had a say in the arguments, feuds and passions that led to the conflicts. Some followed reprehensible orders, all faced circumstances I have not. I, therefore, respect their service, even when not in service to my ideals.

On the eleventh day of the eleventh month at the eleventh hour every year, I am proud to say that I have thought of, prayed and cried for the sacrifices of all veterans. Perhaps due to my age or the fact that I am an American of Irish and Italian descent who is Jewish, my mind goes first to the soldiers who liberated the concentration camps. Beyond the dangers they faced in their war efforts until that day – most took to their graves the horror of what they witnessed, and only in its aftermath.

My uncle was an Italian soldier who spent most of WWII in a Russian POW camp. Was his sacrifice less noble or costly because the leadership of his homeland chose the “other” side? I have a dear friend, an Israeli veteran whose service in the Lebanon war haunts him to this day. You get my point. Veteran’s day is complicated.

I never thought that before, it was driven home by an effort to obtain a small red poppy for a British expat friend in the states. I live in Carlingford, on the border with Northern Ireland, the UK.  I assumed that in my travels I would be able to make a donation and pick up this token of remembrance known all over the British Isles.

Not so. “Ah sure, but you wouldn’t want to be trying to find that.”  “No lass, we wouldn’t be wearing that around here.” “You’re brave to be asking for one of those.”

I have learned to challenge that response. 50,000 Irish soldiers died in WWI and many now serve with UN peacekeepers. I am sorry for the legacy of the British occupation. I try to be sensitive to both sides.

That said I am outraged by the intolerance and disrespect of the young men and women who serve their homelands, anywhere. Especially here.

August (2009) marked the 30th anniversary of the massacre of 18 British soldiers in Northern Ireland. I can see it from my home. There is now an uneasy peace in that conflict. Those 18 mothers and their sons deserved to have their memories honoured. We in the Republic were largely silent.

We should not celebrate the wars – victory or defeat – but we must celebrate the gift of the young lives they and their families have given. Their gift is literally our present.

I have a US homeland, the gift of brave grandparents who emigrated. Ireland is now home. My Irish forbearers were driven out by the policies of the British. Can I hold that against a British soldier? The Irish government generously regards this grandchild still a citizen, their soldiers serve bravely with UN peacekeeping troops worldwide. Can I blame an Irish soldier for the Republic’s neutrality in the face of genocide? The genocide that left my Jewish children deprived of extended families that exist no longer? Here as a Jew I am pilloried as an extension of the Israeli occupation. I have no connection to Israel, should I disdain the service of her young?

Jews trapped in European homelands 70 years ago were citizens of countries and dependent upon the protection of soldiers in whose armies many served. Later they were grateful to soldiers of other homelands who liberated them.

Whose soldiers and what sacrifices would you have me forget?