Little Ears and Hearts

I want to raise good citizens.

I want to raise moral, generous people who will fight injustice wherever they see it happening.

I want to see honorable, compassionate, empathetic adults emerge from the children in my care. But too often I forget this one detail: They are still children.

This past week has uncovered a selfishness I never knew existed in myself and other adults around me. We want to rage and express our fury and take sides and make statements and fight for peace. Because peace is so very often a fight. But in the exercising of our rights to speak up and speak out, we are forgetting that along with those rights comes, as always is the case, responsibility.

We are forgetting that there are little ears and eyes everywhere. We are forgetting that, as any person who's been a parent for more than 5 minutes can tell you: Children are incredibly perceptive. They may not hear us ask them to TAKE OUT THE TRASH until the 66th billionth time we say it, but they hear the whispered worries, the muttered curses, the dining-room discussions. And more than that, they hear the unspoken things: The tones, the stress-filled sighs, the clenched jaws, the slamming and the stomping.

This week, children under my care have asked questions no child should ask. Children under my care have dreamed nightmares no child should dream and have spent truly sleepless nights with the lights on, lights intended to chase monsters away. The problem is, those monsters are not my child's monsters to fight.

This week, I've experienced my own Parent Guilt over my inability to protect my child from the fears all around. Yes, those fears are often legitimate. Yes, those fears are worth weighing and working through. But as we weigh them for ourselves, let us remember to weigh them on a vastly different scale for our children. If we as adults are aghast and appalled and we actually HAVE the tools and resources to do something about what we see happening, how much more anxiety and fear are we placing on the small shoulders of our youngest citizens?

Shoulders which cannot and should not be asked to carry these things.

Shoulders which will crack under the unjust load.

Shoulders and hands which, in most cases, have no power to effect change on the issues and will stand helplessly bowed beneath the burden.

The truth is, all of the children are under our care. We are the ones with the power and the money and the tools and the wherewithal. We can and must protect the voiceless. But in our rush and rage to do so, let us not forget the voiceless and powerless right in front of us. Let us stop and breathe and wait before we speak. Let us remember that innocence, once it is lost, is truly lost. There are years enough ahead for the little ones to lift their share of the load. Don't ask them to do it too soon.

Maybe set aside the politics for a moment. Take the tiny ones on a walk. Read them a sweet story. Snuggle under the covers. It will be healing for them and maybe, within its quietness, we will find healing for ourselves as well.

"Careful the things you say/Children will listen/Careful the things you do/Children will see/And learn." (Stephen Sondheim, "Into the Woods")

The Greater Good

     It was a black-sand volcanic beach in Guatemala. The waves were intense and the undertow more than even our YMCA-swimming-class-honed skills could handle, so we spent most of our days in the pool, our kiddos wearing themselves out and never wanting to leave the water, though every finger and toe was completely pruney and blistered.

     We had traveled from our home in Antigua, Guatemala to the coast for a little R&R. It was a gift from our friends to stay at a lovely resort and just unplug for a few days. Each night we dried the kids off, threw on something more than a swimsuit and tromped across the exotic-flower-speckled lawns, gasping and gaping along the way at the basilisk lizards criss-crossing the grass all around us. We were always the earliest customers at the hotel's restaurant for the buffet dinner, and we were lucky if all three children made it through the meal awake enough to walk back to our room.

     One evening, we noticed a table full of American men near us. My husband graduated from the Air Force Academy and spent several years as an Air Force officer, so he can pretty much spot a military man or woman from 80 paces. He knew immediately that these men were military. We surreptitiously watched them as we carried our plates back and forth from the buffet, but we never said anything to them and didn't see them again until the day we checked out, when they happened to be checking out at the same time. My husband approached them, made small talk and eventually mentioned that he'd been in the Air Force. True to military form, they ribbed him, telling him they were sorry he'd been in that particular branch, and then they mentioned that they were in Guatemala for some training, although they were very vague, revealing nothing specific about their time there. There was more chit chat and, as we were leaving the lobby, my husband and son thanked the men for their service to our country. It was only then that one of the soldiers turned to us and shared that their duty had cost them each greatly. He told us that most, if not all, of the men in his group were divorced or on the brink of divorce. He explained that they were gone from their families for most of the year, missing every major event that a family builds its memory upon.

     We left that hotel lobby sobered and humbled. We left that lobby newly aware of just how much our military sacrifices for us. We left that lobby reminded that the United States, despite all of the flaws that are daily and hourly and incessantly pointed out to us by the talking heads, is a country that has always been known as a nation willing to sacrifice for the greater good. There is nothing like living in another country to give you perspective on just how unique America is. We are willing to fight for those who don't have a voice, to defend the weak, to pursue justice to its end....sometimes to a fault....and why? Because sometimes individual people sacrifice their rights and thousands upon thousands and over and over, even lay down their lives for the greater good.

     It took living in a "survival-driven" society, a society in which too many people HAVE to fight for their daily bread, a society in which basic human needs like food and a place to sleep are very real worries to teach us just how inordinately blessed we as Americans are. Even my poorest, change-counting-hoping-my-checks-clear days are rich compared to the devastating needs I have witnessed in another land. Even my gripes with my government fade when I remember that I can walk into a polling place and vote, free from any fear of violence against me, free from any restrictions on my vote as a female.

     Giving up something dear to me for someone else to receive is not natural. It's not convenient. But oh how grateful I am to those who didn't stop to consider whether or not my life was worth theirs. They gave...all of it....the most precious and sacred gift anyone could give. So today, as we honor our veterans, I receive that gift with humility. I receive that gift with the promise to make sure my children know why that gift was given. I receive that gift with the knowledge that, though I may never agree with the shrouded political reasoning that brought about the circumstances of that gift, I understand its honor, its ultimate surrender, its beautiful power.

     Thank you, veterans. Our debt is not repayable. All we can do is thank you. And we do.

"None of you should look out just for your own good. You should also look out for the good of others" (Phil. 2:4 NIRV)

Another Way

I have a friend whose dad is a bully. A real jerk. He blazes a path to The Land Of Whatever I Want, burning the ground around him and leaving others to clean up the mess.

But my friend isn't like his dad. He chose a way around the nuclear wasteland his father left behind him. He chose a different trail, one of kindness and courtesy.

I have a friend whose mom is cruel. She uses words as warheads, bombing others' hearts and feelings. Her anger cuts deeply and leaves scars.

But my friend isn't like her mom. Although the weapon-wielding of words would feel easy and natural in her mouth, she closes it. She waits. She weighs. She considers.

I have a friend whose boss is a dictator, an amalgamation of every bad-boss movie you've ever cringed your way through. The boss who Scrooges his way through Christmas and tramples on your vacation plans and fires and rehires with the finesse of a tantrum-throwing toddler.

But my friend isn't like her boss. My friend tightropes the delicate line of respect and chain of command and keeps her integrity as close as a balancing pole in her grip.

We don't have to reproduce what we are handed. We don't have to let the trickle-down trickle down.

We can disagree with the dads and moms and bosses and bullies. We can practice the most important job of multitasking we've ever been called upon to do: Showing respect where none has been shown to us and spreading it around by the truckload even if nobody filled up that truck for us.

We can. And today, we must. We are not our genetics. We are not our politics. We are humans in need of empathy. We are hope-givers and compassion-sharers.

We are motivated, not by fear, but by love and commitment to another way, a way around the unkind and the unjust. A better way, not because it is newer and slicker, but because it lifts up the lowest and binds up the most broken. Let's trod this way today.

"Humankindness is overflowing. And I think it's gonna rain today." Randy Newman

No More Qualifying

It all started with a little blue passport. Five little blue passports, to be exact. When you're residing in a Third World Country, your passport is something you file under Very Important Documents. If anything were to suddenly go wrong where you lived or if anyone you loved back in the States had an emergency and you had to make a rapid exit, you needed to know exactly where it was. You even needed it for basic financial transactions around town.

When we lived in Guatemala, we were not official residents of that country, so we were required to cross the border every 6 months and get our passports stamped. Now, due to all of the lovely political fights and deals and "Hey, we don't like your country now!" decisions, the borders that counted toward our stamps were very specific. One country we could cross into was Mexico.

So all 5 of us loaded up onto a Greyhound-type bus and began the long trek to a little border town in Mexico. The journey started off quite promisingly with an explicit movie being shown on the screens right above our open-mouthed children's heads and progressed to even more exciting levels when we all took turns using the "bathroom" on board. This is an excellent cross-training activity. You get to practice isometric squats as you attempt to avoid touching any surface whilst the bus changes lanes and veers around curves at 186 mph. You also get to hone your lung capacity since the smell of the "room" is so intense that you know, once you breathe it in, you are unlikely to eat anything again. Ever.

It was somewhere along a Guatemalan road that we realized that our 6 year-old was ill...quite ill. Now, having parasites was an all-too-common experience for us Gringos. It was just a side effect of the less than clean drinking water we were exposed to. You dealt with it and moved on. But it was a little harder for the little ones. And this time was particularly bad.

There was nowhere to get off the bus except a random village here and there along the road, so we kept going. And kept realizing that things were getting worse. The journey became an increasingly worried-filled one, our stomachs now twisting, not in sickness, but in fear.

Finally, we reached the bus depot in the border town. I was standing by a cracked, plasticky chair as sickness poured out of my sweet child, again, and helpless, panicked tears poured out of me. Suddenly, a tiny, precious lady was beside me. Through my broken, weepy Spanish, we somehow communicated, and I discovered that there was no hospital. But there was a Cruz Rojo. A Red Cross.

Minutes later, we found ourselves in a cinderblock structure, a dirty bucket in the middle of the floor to catch the rain. I divided my time between sticking my head out of the plasticky curtain to check on my two eldest children, sitting beside their new BFF, the taxi driver who'd brought us there, and rushing back into the space that in any US city would be considered a very basic garage, much less an ER.

There was an order for a shot to be given, and then there was a moment when the needle fell. To the questionably-clean cement floor. Before a word could be said, it was scooped up and inserted into my child and I wasn't sure if that moment made me the World's Worst Mother or the World's Calmest.

The phrase "the longest night of my life" is cliche, but there are no better words than those to describe that night in our hotel room. The sickness wouldn't stop. There was no sleep for my son and my brain swung wildly between desperate prayers and trying to decide how we would find a hospital in any town nearby.

Until the dark-shrouded hours of the morning, before the sun, when an exhausted little boy finally crawled to the edge of the bed and asked for Gatorade. And he drank it. And he slept. And the sickness was gone.

I know his life was spared that day, and yet, for years, I mostly avoided telling this story, because my gratitude felt like a slap in the face of another's pain, an insult to other parents whose stories did not end as happily as mine. My default mode has been to share a tale and in the same breath qualify that ohhh but other people have experienced much worse so I should be grateful and ohhh did I mention other people had it much worse?

They do. Absolutely they do. But no more qualifying. No matter what difficulty or pain or fear or betrayal we are going through or have experienced? It is difficulty and pain and fear and betrayal. It just is. The end. Period. Yes, keeping perspective is a healthy thing, but not if it walks hand in hand with denial. Yes, we can and must remind ourselves that most of us are the privileged, super-lucky ones. But hard is still hard. And our stones of remembrance...our stories...are still just that: Our stories, meant to own and meant to share, without qualification.

So tell your stories today...to your friends, to your people. And then put a period on the end as you close your lips tight around the tendency to downplay your experience. It's your story.

With no more apology.

No more "ohhhh buts..."

No more wondering if your story is worth another's listening ear, if it is enough.

No more qualifying.

"The story of any one of us is in some measure the story of us all." Frederick Buechner