There's a new park in Oswestry - I took the boys there a few weeks ago whilst Eve was playing with her best mate from her old school. I love that it is named after Wilfred Owen, Oswestry's most famous, I think. I have taught quite a lot of his poetry, letters and biography over the years, and so feel like I know him a lot better than I did as a grumpy fifteen year old, bored by yet more war poetry in a stuffy, crowded classroom. The park is such a lovely, joyful place. It feels painfully ironic taking my little boys to a place where they have such fun, which is named after a man who was little more than a boy, who died with so many thousands of other boys, in what had become such a terrible place, a hell. When I was still working I listened to Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks in the car on the way to work, and remember arriving at school a sobbing mess one morning, thinking that mothers of boys shouldn't have to teach about the first world war - just too bloody emotive!
So, having spotted the sign on the way into the park, I started thinking, as I watched them climbing so bravely (Recklessly? no. Carefully? no. Bravely will have to do,) how it must feel to see your child go to war. But like a sore tooth that you can't bear to prod with your tongue, my mind shied away.
Then I thought about the soldiers that really ARE still children.
There are still conscripted child soldiers all over the world. They were used in Nepal until recently - it is still being investigated. So, I sat and watched my boys, feeling so, so grateful, so ridiculously lucky to be an English mum. I know our society is not an easy one to grow up in, that there are dangers still, for all kids from all backgrounds but this is one thing I don't face as a possible threat (all though, damn, I am still touching wood). I suppose this is one of the many things I have learnt from ten months in a developing country - the art of being grateful for the luck I used to take for granted.
