Twenty-nine days out of thirty, I cannot be heard above the cacophony of high-pitched shrieks and monster trucks smashing one atop another. My voice is trampled by the line of children marching to and fro across anything I dared hope to accomplish at the start of each new morning. And by nightfall, every tiny head snug in its bed, I’ve nothing left to say anyways, my throat long since tired.
Twenty-nine days out of thirty, my words are swallowed up by all that these children require. That is the great conundrum of motherhood as I nibble broken Pop-tarts in the quiet hours of evening, trying to remember what it was I thought worth mentioning all those hours ago. These paragraphs penned once a month are my chance to speak without interruption, to finally be heard, but as I sit here tonight, my focus lies squarely on those little interrupters, not the ones I birthed but the ones I am borrowing for a time. This small space my voice occupies can amplify theirs.
Americans love a good Holocaust novel. We drink our moderately-priced wine, cover ourselves in the weight of a down comforter, and dive into what we think is an entirely different world. Aghast in our beds, we try to wrap our minds around those evil Germans. We shake our heads and shed our tears laced with a hint of relief that our past is not in these pages, forgetting the trail of atrocities this country was built upon. Someone else’s crimes always overshadow our own.
The unmarked graves of 215 children were recently discovered in Kamloops, British Columbia on the grounds of a former boarding school for Canada’s Indigenous children. 751 remains were found in Saskatchewan at the Marieval Indian Residential School shortly thereafter. Given the 130 such schools in Canada, it may be safe to assume these will not be the only sins coming to the surface, and with America’s eerily similar deculturation of Native peoples, our reckoning cannot be far behind.
One Sunday every month, I tuck my laptop under my arm and trudge up the stairs to the bedroom to write. I’d rather be perched at the desk hidden away in our pantry, but my children always find me on their search for a bag of chips or crayons or toilet paper. Our pantry houses many things, my creativity amongst them.
One Sunday a month, though, I escape my normal space in search of solace and (please God) some profound thought upon which to build 900 words by my column deadline for the local paper.
Tonight, I am miles from profundity. With Bruno Mars blaring from my kitchen and three of four boys play-acting an episode of PJ Masks, the likelihood of crafting anything worthwhile is slim. Like an angel of mercy, my husband turns the music off; Bruno comes to a screeching halt, though my children continue to holler from the living room.
Over the past year, each time I’ve read an article about someone’s experience with the coronavirus and they say something like “I slept for 22 hours” or “I didn’t get out of bed for a week,” my first thought was, “Clearly, this person does not have young children.”
Because I have young children, and their capacity to let me rest in any meaningful way is non-existent.
I am currently seven days into having the virus myself. When I got the call, my doctor reiterated what she had said during the exam in her office the day before. She made note of my sore throat, pounding headache, full-body aches, congestion, and slight cough and told me to drink plenty of fluid, take Tylenol as needed, and rest, rest, rest. I reminded her that I had a 5-year-old and a (teething) 13-month-old to which she smiled a sympathetic smile but had no solution for the predicament I found myself in — I am ill and need to take care of myself. Also, my kids need me 24/7.
This past year has left many of us in ruins. The unluckiest have said premature goodbyes to loved ones. Others have lost jobs, homes, businesses, and financial independence. Those of us who’ve escaped these casualties have suffered in different ways – fear and frustration over continued racial injustice, crumbling mental health, longing for community, warring with family and friends over politics. No one has made it through these last twelve months without a few scars, and many of us still have open wounds.
As we drive through our neighborhoods and on backroads between towns, we see the wallpaper of this past year slowly disintegrating across the frozen landscape. Trump signs linger, painted plywood and weathered blue placards dot the ditches throughout the county and beyond, though nature is slowly stepping in to tear down the divisions between us. Names have already been taken, though, and mental notes made. We all know who belongs to which side, and these things are not easily forgotten, not after the year we’ve had.
Silences linger between family members, and there are pauses in friendships we have now grown accustomed to. This year has revealed more honest versions of ourselves, but this revelation has yet to prove helpful or harmful.
I think back to March when the worry set in, and I began to hold my children just a bit tighter. I remember May and June, the rising racial tensions and righteous anger fueling protests. My husband and I lingered on the brink of something ugly, threatening to split us down the middle if we could not find common ground on how to lead this transracial family of ours. Arguments rolled long into the night, and neither of us knew if we would ever find our way out.
I remember late summer when a traffic ticket led me into a conversation with a local police officer. He wanted to ensure I knew all about the “China virus” and the litany of conspiracies he heralded as facts. Inside the county courthouse, he sat uniformed and smiling, glistening really in his authority and privilege. “My wife, she plays along, but me? I never wear this thing,” he bragged, pulling at the mask laying limp around his neck.
September came and swept my kids up in its undertow as they sobbed onto the kitchen table, missing friends and classrooms they wouldn’t get to see. I excused myself to the pantry to hide my tears behind a closed door, questioning the choice we had made. I remember wondering which onlookers thought we had overreacted.
Then came October and November and December – the longest election of our lives. Those of us who’d made it through the previous months without weeding our gardens were soon covered in dirt, ripping out the creeping thistle we always thought was a flower.
I am sitting in a room surrounded by women who are actually changing the world. They are inherent helpers, carving non-profits from nothing, building whole communities around empathy and ideas and the great need bellowing all around us as we hurry about our days. These women stop to listen. Through open ears, they ease the pain groaning in the streets. In their leggings and overcoat cardigans, they soak up cries from shattered homes throughout cities and rural dead-end roads. They take these cries and use them as fuel to burn the old ways down and start over. With their own money and time, these women birth new organizations, then erect gracious bridges with others who have done the same.
Have you ever actually been grabbed by the pussy? Have you ever felt the pressure of five hungry fingers gripping your body without permission?
Has someone ever clutched, squeezed your flesh without warning or consent – someone you know or someone you don’t, a supervisor or a coworker or a client, a smiling face you had wrongly considered a friend?
Have you ever been kissed by a mouth that “[didn’t] even wait” for an invitation? Have you found yourself alone with someone who expected you would let them “do anything,” someone who then decided that the most private, sacred parts of you really belonged to them?
Has your body ever been the topic of discussion in whispered laughter - your butt, your mouth, your legs, your “big phony tits?” Have you ever listened as a pack of wolves tore that body apart? Did you pause for a moment, trying to decide whether or not you would bear the weight of confrontation once again? And again? And again? And again, did you ask yourself, “Can I just pretend I didn’t hear them this time?”
I am sitting in a concrete classroom. A young professor with thick dark hair and sharply tailored pants stands before the chalkboard. She is smart and beautiful and terrifying. She is everything I hope to be someday, but I am just a bright-eyed freshman, barely eighteen, barely formed. And I am arguing my point.
“Never. It should never be legal in any situation.”
The room is quiet, and the professor stares at me, eyebrows slightly raised.
I have dissented from the crowd, daring to regurgitate that which I’ve been trained to say, things that make sense within my small and simple world. Right now, that world is black and white. I have not yet traveled through the gray.
