I woke up early this morning, but what about Iryna?

I woke up early this morning, nursed my 10-month-old son and put him back in his crib. My eyes are watering because he didn’t sleep last night and I am so tired. I walked downstairs, brushed my teeth, and went to the kitchen. Put some water on the stove to boil so I can make coffee. Sat down at my laptop, looking out the window at the black sky.

Then I imagined what this morning must have looked like for a mother in Ukraine. I pictured her: loose jeans, beige sweater, subtle jewelry. A puffy gray jacket, lavender scarf, brown hair. Her name materialized: Iryna. She’s no longer an abstract idea, she’s flesh and blood. She is just like me, with a home and a career and little ones to love and care for. If I saw her on the street I would smile and tell her how cute her baby is, or how much I like her boots.

Maybe she woke up this morning, but maybe she didn’t wake up at all. Maybe she couldn’t sleep because she also has a 10-month-old son and she’s sleeping on the floor of a train station, and she had to hold her son all night. Maybe she didn’t sleep because she had to carry her son as she walked from Uzhgorod across to border to Slovakia.

Maybe her eyes are watering too. Maybe from lack of sleep, or maybe because watering is all they can do; the tears dried up ten days ago. Maybe they’re watering from the cold night air blowing in her hair as she takes step after step trying to recover – not freedom, not so lucky as that – but some sliver of hope and autonomy. Or maybe they’re watering as she thinks about what she left behind: her home, her community, maybe her husband who stayed to defend their country. Maybe she can’t cry because she has to be strong for her son, because that’s what us mothers do. We must stay strong.

Maybe this morning she walked downstairs, but maybe she had no stairs to walk down. Maybe she had no stairs because her house was destroyed by planes flying overhead dropping bomb after bomb. Maybe she didn’t walk downstairs because she was there when the bomb hit.  

Maybe she brushed her teeth this morning, but maybe hasn’t brushed her teeth in a week. Maybe because there’s no water. Or maybe because she had to leave everything behind and packing a toothbrush and toothpaste didn’t really make the cut for what to pack if you may never see your home again.

I won’t even talk about the coffee, it just seems… trivial. Indecent. Unfair.

But maybe she also awoke this morning to a black sky. Maybe, because like me, she woke up early. Or maybe she didn’t wake up to a black sky at all, maybe it was orange, aflame with the devastation of explosions. Or maybe full of dust, the aftermath, as she walks around the rubble looking for anyone she can save. Maybe there’s someone, or maybe there’s no one. Maybe the blackness is starting to fill her up on the inside, the dark, dry, sucking feeling that we call despair.

I woke up this morning, free. Free to hug my children. Free to stay in my home. Free to go to work, to kiss my husband, to make dinner, to go to sleep without fear. How do we get freedom back to these mothers?  

I don’t know what the point of my writing this is. Maybe it’s to ask you, what did you do this morning? Maybe it’s to inspire gratitude for the things that right now, we take for granted. Maybe it’s to ask, how do we get freedom back to Iryna? Maybe it’s because I feel like the world is on a precipice. Maybe it’s because I feel like the world should stop as our hearts break for these mothers, for their children, but for some reason we still just go about our day. I’m still drinking my blasted coffee. So maybe it’s to say – do something. Do anything. Do whatever feels right to you, but just do. For your solidarity with mamas, for your love of children, for your belief in freedom, for your fear of Niemöller. Whatever the reason, whatever you do: drink your coffee, and then do something. There are mamas that need you, and us mamas – we stand together.