Kids Don’t Know This Won’t Last

Instead of obsessing about the latest assault on common sense, democracy, and honor, we decided to clean up my husband’s office this afternoon.

Behind a bookcase was this little gem of a photo. Me and the Baby Nelson (which is what we called him until he got a brother) thirty-eight years ago downtown at the marina where we have been at least ten thousand times since.

So much hair.

Finding the photo was opportune. I have been thinking about children all day, specifically how one raises happy and unafraid children in this environment. The images of people being violently snatched off the street, military in riot gear, automatic rifles slung over their shoulders, walking in city streets, and, yesterday, the still life of a backhoe taking a breath after knocking down another part of the East Wing of The White House, an American site so sacred that one must actually capitalize the T in The.

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with my mother dying. There was reason for this because she was in and out of the hospital a lot. Hypochondria they said at the time. There’s a misogynist well in that statement but that’s for another time. I was also very worried about the Nazis. We lived in Detroit at the time so Nazis, if there were any, were largely hidden and silent. But still, I worried. So many movies and old film clips of Nazis in Germany, grabbing Jews off the street, the trains, the camps, the skeletons and shoes and forsakenness of it all. Anyway, I was afraid of all that. And I’m not even Jewish.

So, I look at kids right now and I think, oh, honey, don’t be afraid. Everything will be okay. I say that because I’m 77 and have seen plenty of horrible times in our country, but I believe the country is resilient and will come back from this. I can see that in the future, but I don’t think kids can.

They think the way things are is the way they will be. If I was a kid right now, I would be afraid.

I hate that about what’s happening. Nobody seems to be worrying about what kids are seeing and thinking, what they’re soaking into their pores, how what’s happening is giving them bad dreams, making them worry while they look out the window while their teacher reads the next chapter of Charlotte’s Web.

My boy, there in the picture, my first boy was so perfect. He had memories that he couldn’t remember (if you’re an adoptive mom you will understand that) but he was fresh to the world and taking it all in. What a grand time that was, simple and straight ahead. I wish that for moms and dads and kids now even though I know it’s a pipe dream.

I’m thinking of you and your kiddos. Know that.