While in London, the world celebrated Mother’s Day. In my twenty years of living, I have never physically not been with my mom. Though I am lucky enough to be on this study abroad, I find myself missing my family because I have not seen them since the end of spring break. However, this has allowed me to reflect on the experiences of family. I was unable to take photos within the Imperial War Museum’s Holocaust section, but a sizable part of their section was about children and families. This made me realize how thankful and grateful I am to have both a safe place to call home and that I still have my mother with me. Within this section of the museum, it was easy to see the sacrifices that mothers had to make throughout the war. Though nowhere comparable to wartimes, my mother has had to make sacrifices to keep her children alive and thriving. Furthermore, viewing the section in the museum about twins made me feel that much more grateful. As a twin, I could never imagine living through something as traumatic as World War II or the Holocaust because there was a high chance of both of us not surviving.
Even in modern times, seeing families in the “wild” has been an interesting experience. To compare to the United States, families are more similar than I thought they would be. Little kids still try to run away from grabbing their father’s hands, mothers still comfort their child after falling on the ground, and kids are still making up new words to describe what they found on TikTok. However, there is a sense that everything is calmer, in a way. Rarely have I heard talk about a quiet chat volume level and the kids, though they can be loud, have slightly more respect to other people. I found it interesting because it shows what ideals are taught in certain countries. Something different about this dynamic was the fact that school aged children are going on a cross country ferry with only a few chaperones. I would never be able to fathom something like this in the United States!
