Children and Memories of Wars and Memories of Children

Gertrude Stein's forebears made their livelihoods on war. Her grandfather was a tanner; her father and uncles set up shop in Baltimore, manufacturing uniforms for the soldiers of both the Confederate and the Union armies. Gertrude's father disliked the stress of that business and left Baltimore for Pittsburgh, where he established a dry goods company on Wood Street, in the heart of Pittsburgh's thriving commercial sector.

Very shortly after Gertrude was born, she and her mother were shipped off to Europe to live with an uncle, while her father pursued other business interests. Gertrude lived in Vienna and Paris, then returned to Baltimore, all in the first four years of her life.

Gertrude writes about a child's memories, and of war, in "Wars I have Known:"

"[My mother] wanted to be nearer America so she packed up and left the tutor and governess behind her and with the five children she went to Paris. I continued to be the youngest one. I was about four years old then and I do not know whether I really remembered more about Paris but I think I did. It always does make war because one of the things that seemed to me in 1914 was that Paris was then the way I remembered it when I was four only then there was no war. But war makes things go backward as well as forward and so 1914 was the same as 1878 in a way.

"Of course there are a good many times when there is no war just as there are a good many times when there is a war. To be sure when there is a war the years are longer that is to say the days are longer the months are longer the years are much longer but the weeks are shorter that is what makes a war. And when there is no war, well just now I cannot remember just how it is when there is no war."


How many Iraqi children do you suppose have memories of a time when there was no war? How many Iranian children do you suppose have memories of a time when there was no war?
In 2030, when George Bush believes his legacy will be vindicated, how many Iraqi children will have memories of a time when there was no war?
Is it a good idea or a bad idea to surround the children of Iran with images and memories of a United States that makes war or of a United States that makes friends and beautiful paintings and poetry?
Which memories would you like your children to hold from today until 2030?
If you are an Israeli child, which memories would you like Iranian children to hold about you?

Make those memories today.
Thirty years from now, you can't unmake them.