War Orphans Day

He was sitting at the airport, a hub, with a lot of traffic en route to here and there — and everywhere. There were men and women, separate, rolling their excursion's worth of belongings, steering them this way and that — and every way.

There were children struggling to keep up with the pace, half-dragged by grasping parental hands. The hands came singly or in pairs. There were parents in duos towing their children; there were single parents doing the same.

People have places to be, people to meet, and things to do. Families, the same. Whole families.

He thought about raising children and doing it right. He was from a sophisticated society, so he reviewed in his mind the trends and the controversies:

• Breastfed or not.
• C-section, vaginal birth; Lamaze or medicated.
• Hospital birth or home.

All of these things, according to the pundits, go somewhere in the brain of a child being raised. Nurture vs nature. Abuse or not. Sibling rivalry or only-child.

The brain is an expanding universe, and the cosmic objects that fuse a synapse, break this bond, or delay that neurotransmitter are in free-flight within the cerebral æther, colliding and careening as a child grows.

A boggled mind is mind-boggling.

A coddled mind is mind-toggling.

As he sat and watched the pedestrian traffic, he observed the children. He found it funny. He realized he couldn't tell — by their behavior alone — which children had been breastfed, which had been bottle fed; he couldn't tell who were born naturally or by surgery; he couldn't even tell the circumcised boys from those, not. Children of Muslims, Jews, Christians, or atheists.

So, he laughed.

What he could tell — again, by their behavior — which children were being raised. Raised right. That is, with a parent or parents. With a village. He spotted the chidren on both, of Santa's, good list and bad list, but these were lists of parents.

When he thought of children raised by war — by hate, death, and destruction — he could only wonder how they might raise their own.

So, he wept, for it was as much his world as theirs.