In a world where nothing is entirely safe, innocent or wholly clear, mothers place themselves between all the sufferings of the world and their children so that their children’s world may remain beautiful, childlike, bright, innocent and safe.

The price of this impossible task is that they are continually compelled to bury their deepest contradictions somewhere within themselves.

Before everything that is wrongly placed in this world, mothers are forced to accept the impossible responsibility of always standing in the right place.

A place from which they are expected to hide even from themselves the failures and shortcomings of their own incompletely lived lives.

Mothers know that, one day not far away, their children will inevitably confront all this darkness and experience psychological orphanhood. Yet even amid war and destruction they protect their children’s childhood world with their lives.

And even when life collapses and the pillars of the world fall, mothers return in the form of perpetual mourners to shelter their children in a world without shelter, although they themselves have never found a refuge.

Aydin Areta
Inspired by a conversation from the film
“Simon Simon”, written by Mike Mills