Mother’s Day is such a sweet holiday. Small children press their hands into plaster and paint pictures of smiling families under fat yellow suns, creating keepsakes that mothers will treasure for as long as they live.

Flower shops and plant nurseries rack up their biggest sales of the year, as do Hallmark and restaurants serving brunch. Why brunch is the traditional Mother’s Day meal I don’t know. Maybe so Mom can get home to put another load of clothes in the wash and get started on dinner. Or plow the back 40. But I digress.

While surfing, er, researching for this column, I learned that Mother’s Day is celebrated in many cultures, but it was first suggested as a national holiday in the United States in 1870 by Julia Ward Howe. She felt the nation, still reeling from the Civil War, needed a day dedicated to peace, reasoning that anyone who creates life wants to preserve life as well.

An excerpt from her Mother’s Day for Peace Proclamation reads:

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with

Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm!

The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.

Blood does not wipe our dishonor,

Nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,

Let women now leave all that may be left of home

For a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means

Whereby the great human family can live in peace…

I’m sorry, if you were expecting a cheery column about where to buy great gifts, or an amusing anecdote from my dysfunctional childhood, you can stop reading now.

If ever we needed a Mother’s Day for Peace, this is it.

Unfortunately, in a time when all mothers should stand together to “solemnly take counsel with each other,” our nation’s current course of war has divided mothers as well as the nation.

On one side are the Cindy Sheehans and Mothers Against War-types, protesting the Iraq War and opposing the administration that prescribed it as a cure for terrorism.

They don’t want their children, or anyone’s “dying for nothing,” as Sheehan puts it.

Sheehan, in case you somehow missed it, is a mother whose son Casey was a soldier killed in Iraq. She gained national attention by setting up camp in protest outside of Pres. Bush’s Crawford, Texas ranch.

Sheehan has noted that it will be a sad Mother’s Day for many.

“Somewhere, here in our country there is a mother who is hoping that she will receive a Mother’s Day card from her soldier, or perhaps, if she is extremely lucky, a rushed telephone call.

“There is a mom out there who has been worried sick about her soldier since they arrived in the combat zone. Maybe the mom still supports George Bush and the occupation or maybe the mom is certain if her child is killed in this abomination that her sweet baby, her soldier will have died for lies and betrayals.”

On the other side are the mothers who have children in combat and support what they are doing, and the administration that initiated this battle for freedom and democracy.

While Sheehan started a group called “Gold Star Mothers,” signifying a mother whose child had died in combat, the other side has the “Blue Star Mothers of America, Inc.,” formed in 1942.

The organization’s history reads in part: “Being attacked on our own soil has once again started mothers hanging flags in their windows at home proclaiming pride in the fact that we have children protecting our freedom during a time of war.”

The group works to “provide support for active duty service personnel, promote patriotism, assist Veterans organizations, and (be) available to assist in homeland volunteer efforts to help our country remain strong.”

These are the women who tie yellow ribbons on every tree in the neighborhood and plaster their cars with “Support the Troops” magnetic yellow ribbons and bumper stickers. They are also the wives of servicemen, left at home to take care of the children while the men are off “defending their country” on foreign soil.

My heart goes out to both groups of women. I can’t think of a worse pain than the feeling that your child died “for nothing.” But I don’t think the pain can be much less for those who feel their child died “for their country.”

For both sides, Mother’s Day will never be same. Perhaps on this Mother’s Day those two sides can reach out to each other and, as Ward Howe suggested, “bewail and commemorate the dead.”