My mother is 70 years old and has lived her entire life in the quiet Upstate New York town of Phelps, population 2,000, where local farming issues, snowfall, heat waves, town gossip, marriages, and grandchildren are the predominant conversation topics amongst her peers. To her knowledge, her lineage is Dutch, with perhaps a sprinkling of French. None of her friends are Irish or of heavy Irish descent. She has never traveled to Ireland or the United Kingdom, and it is unlikely she ever will. Her sole connection to this beautiful but turbulent corner of the world is through my travels and experiences there.

Over the years, my mother has either read or heard directly from my impassioned perspective about internment, week-long police interrogations without access to a solicitor, juryless courts, the Omagh bombing of Protestant and Catholic civilians, the murder of attorney Rosemary Nelson, and countless incidents of harassment or deaths of citizens at the hands of the governing security forces or outlawed paramilitary organizations. None of this made her shed tears. Not even close. My mother raised herself economically out of Depression-era surroundings, and consequently is a woman of moderate political views and an avid believer in personal responsibility. She is tolerant of others, but is not easily swayed by "causes" or "movements" or "rights." Living in Phelps, where the population is 99% white and static, it's hard for her at times to completely reach out mentally to other parts of the world when those parts of the world do not enter into her daily reality as they would if she lived in cosmopolitan cities such as New York or San Francisco.

Last week, all that changed.

At some point, while watching the television news, she was confronted with the horror of what happened at Holy Cross Girls' Primary school in North Belfast. For those of you not in the know, or overwhelmed by recent events in New York City and Washington, last week Northern Ireland, in a way, crossed its own psychological divide: the breaking point at which one of its last traces of innocence was lost, never to be recaptured.

Holy Cross was built in the Protestant, pro-British neighborhood of Glenbryn over 30 years ago, at a time before the current conflict. Its current students, Catholic school girls aged 4 through 11, come from the Catholic, pro-Irish neighborhood of Ardoyne, 300 yards away, across a 20-foot concrete and metal "peace line" separating the two communities.

As the Ardoyne has become more Catholic over the years, Glenbryn and other nearby communities have seen an outflow of Protestants. In San Francisco, we would call that "changing demographics." In North Belfast, from a Protestant viewpoint, this is viewed as territory lost, just another development in their perceived loss of rights, political influence, and economic opportunity -- once rampant in the "old days" of Protestant control, now vanishing in a post-Good Friday Agreement and post-manufacturing based world, where the Catholic proportion of the population is approximately 45% and growing.

In the long-run and the short run, many moments led up to last week's events. Each side and distanced observers have statistics, incidents, or remembrances of killings, beatings, rock throwing and the like, and each side has made its claim to have endured more of it.

Given that North Belfast has been the stage for almost a quarter of the province's Troubles-related murders over the past three decades, there are many atrocities to remember. Over this past summer, conflict persisted: claims and counterclaims of violence surfaced, as did marches and protests near the school. Local leaders attempted to resolved their differences before school resumed. They failed.

As school neared, tensions mounted, and a resumption of protest near or at the school -- this time more aggressive -- seemed likely. Protestants were left to psychologically cede "territory," conduct a protest at a more appropriate location, or descend upon the school. Catholic parents were confronted with the choices of escorting their children along a direct path to the front of the school, taking a more elusive path toward the back entrance, or keeping their children at home. And their choice would have to take place within their community dynamic: a group once kept "in its place," now becoming more empowered with each passing year and exercising their claim to a universal right: the right to education.

Last Monday, the first day of school arrived at Holy Cross. Remember your first day of school? New friends to make, old ones to catch up with. A new set of teachers. The novelty of new books, with words and numbers at the end that you wonder how you're going to possibly learn. Perhaps with the aid of a new box of crayons and collection of pens?

The girls of Holy Cross who attended will remember none of these things.

On that day and over ensuing ones, their mothers and they were subjected to Protestant protests along the school route and by the school, intended to intimidate and prevent their entrance.

They were screamed and whistled at, called "Fenian sluts," who should "get back to your rat holes and your pedophile priests," and that there was "no school today ya wee whores."

Bottles, stones, bricks, and a bomb were thrown at them.

One mother and several police officers were injured. The tears and sheer panic this induced in the children echoed through the Ardoyne, and was captured in print and on camera for the world to see.

These protests are still continuing, albeit in a calmer, less vitriolic manner. Subsequent news reports indicate the coin has also been flipped: Protestant students are being harassed at locations throughout Belfast.

As with all stories in Northern Ireland, there were many undercurrents beneath the main event. Given all the options for killing, marching, or protesting at other venues, a collection labeled by journalist Nell McCafferty as an "ugly, illiterate, inarticulate, menacing, rotten mass of lumpen proletariat" decided to make another perceived last stand against Catholic encroachment in front of a girl's school.

Catholic mothers, made one of their three choices, and many chose the direct route, for to have done otherwise would have acknowledged intimidation, acknowledged "their place" in a supine position they justifiably want no part of.

And Northern Ireland's police, the almost exclusively Protestant Royal Ulster Constabulary, found themselves working with the British Army to prevent chaos, and were rewarded by insults and attacks from "their" people. In all, an unenviable scene out of Hades.


My mother, however, did not cry for the RUC or for the plight of the Catholics or the sense of betrayal or perceived obsolesce of the Protestant vision. As she tried to tell me what she saw, she broke down.

I waited for a few seconds for her to compose herself.

As she went on to explain in a wavering voice, her heart reached out for the children, for the look of terror on their faces as the crowd raged at them, for the way that they clung desperately to their parents: their only avenue for succor in a world dramatically, inexplicably closed in on them.

What my mother cried about, in words not expressed, came from the sense of motherhood: one of the greatest life forces on this planet, and for those women who take it seriously -- and most do -- the defining philosophy and experience of their lives. What my mother understood, and what has been devoid from the incident itself and from the commentary stemming from it, was that motherhood itself was on trial that day and found wanting.

No, what happened at Holy Cross school was a Rubicon of sorts, the day when tactics truly won out over motherhood.

Protestants -- and some amongst the agitators were mothers themselves -- decided that their "tactic" to conduct a protest, to affirm their precarious way of life, was more important than motherhood or the well-being of children.

The mothers themselves, perhaps individually, perhaps as a group, perhaps forced by the bounds and norms of their own community, decided that the "tactic" of not going through the back door was more important than the primary code of motherhood, which is under no circumstances do you subject your own children to needless harm. Even if it means creating problems for yourself. Even if it means selling your soul. Even if it means sacrificing your life.

Last week, for a blink in Northern Ireland's troubled but often predictably violent history, a province, at one of its key flashpoints, collectively relegated the love, protection, and responsibility of motherhood to the back burner, all to engage once again in a futile dance, this time choreographed by the blinding dissonance of sectarianism.

It was not the first occasion when children have been impacted by the Troubles: others have been killed or maimed by paramilitaries or security personnel.

But it was the first time decisions were made which led to a violent epicenter being placed directly, exclusively, at childhood's doorstep in full view of the world. Consequently, perhaps the only true innocents were put in harms way, and, unsurprisingly, harm arrived.

Remember the first time you went to school and some strange child pushed you or called you a name or made fun of you? Remember how hard that was to process? Now imagine clinging to your parents as residents -- not the British Army, or the RUC, or the IRA -- hurl nakedly sectarian abuse at you, letting you know without ambiguity that you are not loved, are not appreciated, and are not wanted in the only part of the world you know.

That's what my mother wept about.

That is what my mother cried about.

Perhaps others did in Phelps, in San Francisco, where you live. Perhaps yours would, or you did if you are a mother.

I have met numerous lawyers, politicians, and journalists in my exposure to the Northern Ireland human rights community. Lawyers, at moments such as this, grapple for eloquent phrases and facts to buttress their arguments. Politicians resort to expressing their position. Journalists marshal the "facts" and try to disseminate them in some nod to impartiality.

In this instance, I found that my mother's emotion was worth more than all this put together.

Sometimes crying is the correct emotion, the only appropriate, genuine response. Tears need to fall when something has been lost, by everyone, that cannot be truly, completely reversed.