Last week I cried longer and harder than I have in a very, very long time. For three days, I dropped my kids off at school with visions of picking them up at the close of the afternoon in body bags. I could not shift that image from my mind as the hours of the morning ticked by.
“Where are they right now?” I wondered, as I sorted the laundry. Were they sharing their good news for the day? Were they out for recess or nibbling on a morning snack? Were they thinking of me as I fixated on their little bodies ducking under desks as they tried their best to stay quiet? “Please stay quiet, please stay quiet,” I pleaded. Or maybe they should run. Maybe I should tell them to just run and keep running as fast as their feet can carry them. Maybe we should all run.
Two mothers stand along a busy road in the chill of a January afternoon.
“Are you from here?” she had asked, peeking out the vehicle window. The woman, I had assumed, was in search of directions.
“Yes, can I help?” Relieved, she exited her car with a small stack of postcards, bold black ink printed across the top. An American flag waved from the bottom. She pushed one in my direction.
“I wanted to let you know about an upcoming school board meeting where they will be discussing some really important issues.” She smiles. I smile back.
Based on the handout’s bullet points, I am doubtful we will be allies. But the concern in her eyes is evident, so I let my hope linger just a bit longer on the snowflakes drifting between us.
“What are the issues?” I ask. She enters into her spiel.
Her opening sentence snatches all hope from the wind and drops it to the icy sidewalk. It seems she is very concerned about the books in the school library. I wouldn’t believe the vulgarity in these books, I’m told. The cursing. The propaganda. The lesbians! And the lies – so many lies. “Would I believe all of these lies?” she wonders.
Last November, as fall crept slowly toward winter, I was holed up in my house staring at a teacher who was holed up in her house trying to teach my kid his multiplication tables. I was defeated, and most likely in desperate need of a shower, as I straddled the line between lethargy and fits of unbridled rage. I felt disconnected from the outside world, and I knew the holidays in whatever unfamiliar form they took, would only bring further isolation.
There were glimpses of normality during the bright months of summer – a drive to the South Dakota wilderness, jaunts to the beach, conversations held within the glow of a campfire. By the time fall rolled around, though, many of us had retreated back into our homes to protect those around us, no one knowing how much longer the pandemic would last or how much longer we would.
The little blonde boy hops down from his power wheel and runs to my side. He plants a kiss on my cheek and another on the top of my head, then charges back to the waiting John Deere. Landing next to my other foster son, the two race away to fight dragons and catch fairies somewhere in the backyard.
Soon, they return, each presenting me with careful, cupped hands holding fairies from the woods. We talk to their captives, exchange names and pleasantries before the duo heads back toward adventure. By the fifth lap, the whine of their carriage indicates a dying battery. A little magic turns their plastic scooters into horses, and they climb aboard. I sit in my beach chair on the front pavement in awe of the transformation before me.
This child with the fresh cut hair and sneaky smile hardly resembles the one brought to this driveway four short months ago. His are the same eyes, the same white blonde widow’s peak, but there are times like this one where his presence seems wholly changed. I watch the two boys play together without pinching fingers or shoving matches. They laugh and take turns. We go entire minutes without tears or anyone screaming my name. As the early sun peeks through the canopy above, they delight in one another’s company – a feat so unimaginable during the initial adjustment period. That’s not to say we aren’t still adjusting.
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.
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.
