October 27, 2018: Tree of Life

I just spent breakfast biting back tears, not wanting to tell my Jewish sons what happened in Pittsburgh. That Jews were murdered while sitting in synagogue, by a man yelling “All Jews must die.” Because parenting is now a constant balance between teaching my kids what they need to know to engage with their world, and not wanting to traumatize them. As a parent you’re not supposed to traumatize your children.

And still, every time, I’m aware that these shifting realities, this intensifying call to be aware, stand up, listen, and act — that people of color have been dealing with this reality all along. I think I’ve always been an activist, but I’ve still had the luxuries of safety and choosing how much to shelter my kids or expose them. Of controlling the valve between them and the horrors of this world. But no parent who’s had to have The Talk with their child — that police could arrest or kill that child for no reason — has enjoyed that luxury. No person who every day negotiates a world that wants to keep them down and devalued has enjoyed that luxury.

So I sit with the trauma, pretty terrified and furious, on the knife edge between broken and resolute. I don’t know what I’ll tell my boys — don’t know how to make it okay for them to go to synagogue and out in the world — but I will tell them something. Because here’s what I want them to know: If you love this world even a little bit, even just some sweet corner of it, you have to face and wrestle with its horrors.