There are acts of childcare that tap into primal feelings that trigger animalistic instincts and deep emotions. When these things go well, they calm and bring comfort, and when they don’t they bring sometimes irrational levels of stress and anxiety. This is why parents stress so much about feeding their children. In most modern day middle-class households children are not going to go hungry, but we get very concerned when kids don’t eat a good dinner, even though they will be fine. This is why you find babies overly wrapped up and sweating in winter clothing. Feeding and keeping your children warm are very basic instincts we have as humans, and the other one is keeping our children clean through bathing.
Bathing your another human being is a wonderful act of care and compassion. It bonds parents with children, and can be a great moment of joy. Many babies immediately love splashing water during baths. Bubbles are magical and the feeling of carefully moving through the process of bathing is an intimate and beautiful way of saying, “I love you.”
When bathing is not in an idea situation it bothers us. I’ll never forget this picture of a newborn being washed in a refugee camp. It’s one of the most impactful images I’ve seen in my entire life. It’s an effort to do something so meaningful, and done with in a situation that no baby, no human being should have to endure. This photo is expression of our failure as a race, and a country to use its privilege to provide for this child the dignity of a bath done in a place that is warm, comforting, and truly a home. When children are robbed of this, it shakes us to the core. It's like the image of a cold child, or a starving baby. These images tap into feelings we try to ignore, but are emotions we really should lean into to better understand our own humanity.
Ollie and I have been through different stages of care related to his bath. At some points Diana took the lead, other times we switched off. There were baths done in the kitchen sink, then done in a little inflatable tub inside of a bath tub. As he got older he got full on baths, sometimes bubble baths, and for a while I took showers with Ollie. He let me know he was ready to move on from that experience about a year ago so now I give him a half baths. I turn on the facet, he sits in the bath, and the bath fills a couple inches as I help him get clean. Sometimes he’s interested in toys, others times he just chills out. Since Ethan has entered our lives, Ollie’s baths have primarily become my duty. Usually Ethan nurses during this time.
Ollie is five years old. He can pretty much give himself a bath, but I still do things for him during this process. Why? Well, because I like to, and while maybe I should push him to do more by himself, I don’t mind it. He does so many things more independently every single day, and sometimes doing things for him isn’t such a bad thing. You can disagree and that’s fine, but I like bathing my boy, and it’s a way that I show that I love him.
For about a week and a half bathtime has become filled with anxiety and fear for me. The stories of the suffering of children who have been separated from their parents at their border has never left me since I became aware of this atrocity. It comes out here and there but it’s never deep below the surface. I try to move forward through my day and not dwell on it, but during bathtime I haven’t been able to move past these thoughts and I experience a waking nightmare in the bathroom with Ollie.
I image Ollie in one of these facilities separated from me and Diana. For some reason what disturbs me the most is imagining him struggling to give himself a bath or a shower. I feel guilty that I’m not pushing Ollie harder to be more independent during bath time, and that I have not prepared him at all to care for himself without me and Diana.
Yes, this feeling of guilt and fear is illogical, and preposterous. I can get Ollie to give himself a bath more independently, but it shouldn’t be in preparation for him to survive without us. No parent of a five year old should be raising their child with the idea that you preparing for them to live on their own. No parent should be doing this, and no child should be yanked away from their parents and have to survive on their own, but it’s happened. It's not fixed, there's been no meaningful apology, and no one has been held accountable for these actions.
I get the empathy gap. You don’t have sympathy for gay people because you aren’t gay. You don’t care about Black Lives Matter because you don’t know any black people. I’m saying I accept people’s empathy gap’s as accepting ways of human behavior. I'm not saying it's ok. However, I cannot understand how every parent in America is not wrecked to the core about what is happening to these kids. It’s probably a race thing. If there were white cute blond toddlers screaming for their mothers while being separate from their parents in English maybe there would be complete outrage in our society. I don't need that representation to feel something.
Maybe it's easier for me to feel something because my kid is a shade of brown, and I am my parents were immigrants. I don’t care what language cries occur, a child's expression of sorrow transcends language. I cannot look at my children and not imagine them in these horrible situations. Whatever rationale people use to push away any empathy for these families and these kids is working against exactly what makes us human, and must be rotting their souls away.
Similar to this nightmare I had about Ollie that I wrote about in this post, when I finally told Diana and she hugged me, bathtime went a lot better for me. It was one of moments when all I needed was validation to process my fears and be able to focus on my kids. Being able the focus on the job I needed to do as a parent and do that well makes me more able to productively think about how I could make this situation better for these families.
It’s not productive to focus on worst case scenarios. However, it’s important that we as parents let ourselves feel the fear, and struggles of other parents in our community, in our country, and in the world. These feelings takes us to dark places, and it can feel like it’s wrecking us from the inside out. However, it’s these moments of discomfort and profound sadness that nurture empathy for others and helps focus and honor the privilege of time and presence that we have with our children.
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