The Purple Reaction is a music blog that focuses on music in our culture and explores the history, theory and artistry that make the music we love so great. This is a celebration of art, the emotional connections that we feel through music and the deep personal meaning we experience through great music.
This blog features new posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
The Merrick Rose Garden in Evanston, Illinois, features over 200 varieties of roses. It was only a couple blocks away from the condo we lived in for the first four years of Buffy's life. We would regularly take her to this garden during our walks.
Buffy loved this garden. In the grass clearing in the center, she would run around and play and walk around the garden, stopping to smell the roses.
On her last evening, we took her back to her garden.
We had time.
It was Thursday, and she was going to transition on Friday. We planned to take her to the garden after dinner. I decided to make her one of her favorite foods, steak. After a week of trying to get her to eat anything, I wasn't expecting her to eat, but I figured, why not try?
I went through the routine, and after getting plating dinner for my boys, I chopped up the steak into small pieces and put them in a bowl. I put the bowl on the floor in front of Buffy's bed, where she was napping, and walked back to the table. As we started eating dinner, I heard a rustling and an odd sound. I stood up and looked over, and there was Buffy eating steak out of the bowl and inadvertently pushing the bowl across the hardwood floor.
"Diana, look!"
We stood for a minute watching Buffy for the first time in almost a week. I felt relieved, excited, and happy to see her enjoy one last meal.
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Diana carefully carried Buffy into the rose garden and put her down on the path. She slowly walked around as our sons ran around the path and the grassy clearing in the center. A family with small children was in the clearing playing with soap bubbles. Like many times before, the children got so excited when they saw Buffy. One of them asked politely if they could pet Buffy and said okay, directing them to pet Buffy as she liked on her back. The other children followed and waved at Buffy as they waved thank you and commented how Buffy was so pretty.
Buffy stood there proud and patient during this exchange as she always had when children approached, enjoying the attention and her power to bring joy into other people's lives with her presence.
I couldn't help but cry as we held Buffy and posed for some pictures with Buffy.
Then the time felt right for us to go. Buffy wasn't walking much, so I picked her up and carried her across the street to our parked car.
Before getting into the car, I paused and looked back at the rose garden. Holding Buffy looking up at that unbelievably blue sky above the garden, it felt like I was holding our past, this moment, and our last day together.
Parenthood is not essential to living a meaningful life and having children is not necessary to have a great marriage.
I recently saw a post on Facebook talking about how having children shouldn't be called “starting a family.” The post was making the point that two married people are a family and that family can exist amongst friends and doesn’t require marriage. I agree with this 100% as someone married and has three children.
People need different things in life, and people’s families look different. I remember driving home after we got Buffy and feeling like we were more of a family. It’s not like Diana and I weren’t a family with just the two of us, but seeing Buffy asleep in Diana’s lap made our family feel more complete. It’s not like we weren’t happy before we had Buffy, but I think we both sensed that we were missing something and found that in Buffy.
There was a process when we decided to have a child. It’s too private to share here, but I will say that it took time and a lot of conversations. We both were committed to having children. That is something that we had talked about before we had married, but the timing was the point of discussion.
I clearly remember a moment in the first month of Ollie’s life when Diana, Ollie, and Buffy were all asleep, looking at the three and feeling that we were a family. I felt so content and so at peace. I was grateful and proud.
I’ve felt these moments through the years when we are all together. Sometimes it’s in a car ride or at a park when I can feel everyone’s presence and energy together at the same time. I’ve looked for this in my family, and I have found this feeling in my children and my wife.
I don’t think I lived a life without meaning when I didn’t have children. I worked hard to help children as a teacher, I was kind and supportive to my friends, and I did the best I could to be a positive partner to my wife and a good son to my parents. It’s not that life’s meaning doesn’t exist when you don’t have children; it’s just different.
There are things about life that you can only understand by having children, and there are things that you can only understand about life by doing other things, like playing sports, being a doctor, and other things that provide unique life experiences.
I feel like people put too much emphasis on having children. This speaks to the very primitive part of our nature, but it also reflects patriarchal viewpoints about the centrality of having children that subjugate women. Religious dogma that placed value on women based on whether they have children is oppressive and wrong.
I spend working days with children, and I come home to children, which is the life I chose. It’s a challenging life, an exhausting life, but it’s my life. I feel grateful to be part of such a wonderful family. My family is large than some and louder than many, and it’s just one example of many of what it means to be a family.
I didn't think masks-optional was going to be so hard.
This week was weird because this week was when we started the masks-optional policy. While it is obvious to me that a mask-optional policy is beneficial, logical, and the right policy. Teaching when students choose to wear masks is weird, joyful at times, and frustrating.
Like so much that has happened during this pandemic, teaching in a mask-optional school is a new experience. Like remote teaching and teaching with mitigations during the fall of 2020, we are jumping into teaching in a mask-optional school with little training, lots of anxiety, and more unknown than known.
The transitions masks-optional policy in America is a shameful mess. Instead of a smooth transition that acknowledges evolving science and centered on the need of children, the movement towards mask-optional policy was muddled by politics, misinformation, overreactions, power battles, and lawsuits. This is the context that people in my school community had to make decisions around a mask-optional policy this week.
I chose to teach without a mask. I am boosted, my wife and oldest son are vaccinated, and my children are in the age brackets where COVID-19 has very low chances of being a severe illness. I accept that the likelihood of I’ll get COVID-19 is moderate, and I also know that the possibility of I will get a severe case of COVID-19 after exposure is diminishingly low. There is no reason for me to wear a mask.
After this week, here’s the bad news about the masks-optional policy.
Kids were wacky this week. There is an unsettled feeling in the school. More students are distracted and express anxiety in unproductive ways. Hopefully, this will pass.
So much feels unsaid. Why is a student wearing a mask? Why is someone not wearing a mask? Are people wearing a mask resenting those who aren’t? Am I making other people uncomfortable by not wearing a mask? We don’t know how to talk about these wonders, but we are all thinking about them.
There are new concerns as a teacher. Am I paying more attention to students not wearing masks? Do I have a bias around mask-wearing that I am unintentionally expressing?
It’s really to know how to handle teaching a class where not wearing masks except for two students and then teach a class immediately after where everyone but two ARE wearing masks.
Some students choose to wear masks for specific classes and then go unmasked for other times during the school day. I had two students walk into my music class, grab an extra masks by my door, and wear it throughout the class. Then when they left my classroom they threw the masks away. I checked in with their homeroom teacher. He hadn't seen them wear masks that day.
The good part of masks-optional.
The smile on the students' faces who aren't wearing masks combined with the light in the eyes of those are wearing masks enjoying other people's faces feels great.
I feel more connected to my students when I’m not wearing a mask. They react to my smile, and my “teacher face.” Teaching feels more unrestrained without a mask. It feels like shedding a layer of fear.
Mask-optional is progress. This is a movement when hope has been fulfilled in a time when hope is not something we have in excess.
We can’t do this forever. Mask-optional is a way for people to transition into the next stage of this pandemic, but it can’t be an arrival point. Maybe all of the negatives I experienced this week will go away with time. I hope because among the bright moments this week, I felt many frustrating moments of “I don’t know,” which unfortunately has become the norm for the past two years.
There's a dark side to your heart growing three sizes.
When I first saw Ollie, I immediately felt complete and unconditional love for him. It really did feel like my heart got bigger in an instant. This happened again with Ethan and with Lucas. Each time it was an overwhelming feeling. My breath left me, time slowed down, and everything felt right in those moments.
I felt so deeply about my children over time and I felt more for other people's children. The suffering of children affected me deeper. I had to work to ignore the cries of pain from children. And I felt burdened at times by empathy.
In 2015, The photo of Alan Kurdi, a two-year-old lying face down on the beach, who died from drowning and became the symbol of the refugee crisis caused by the Syrian war and the European refugee crisis it triggered, emotionally wrecked me.
Alan was two-years-old when he died, the same age as Ollie, my first son at that time. This photo reminded me of the worst nightmares in my entire life I had a couple of months before I saw this photo. I remember holding Ollie and feeling his weight, knowing what it was like for Alan's parents to hold him in the past, and not being able to imagine what it would mean to lose him.
As hard and painful as moments like seeing that photo of Alan Kurdi are, they make me feel a more profound connection to humanity. When I read about the horrible anti-trans laws in Texas, I get on an intellectual level why they are absurd and harmful. What is more powerful is how I feel the importance of protecting trans-children. Being anti-trans is locking people into boxes around gender stereotypes. I see how much joy Ethan gets in wearing jewelry and how much pleasure Ollie gets in going to dance class. They help me know on an emotional level how essential it is to provide everything possible to help all children feel loved and supported.
There is also joy. After having children, I get overjoyed seeing happy babies. I love seeing children be proud of themselves. And I smile when I hear the sound of children's laughter. All of these things remind me of my children and give me hope. If the wonder of the beauty of my children is filling the lives and hearts of others, there is hope for us all.
When you open up your heart to your little one, you open your heart to the world. The full range of emotions comes more immediately and profoundly when you move through the world with a larger heart. This means that you have to pause to feel, and take time to process. All of this helps you grow as a person through connections that you make with others through empathy and love.
Some people are passionate about schools because they understand that the future well-being of our society rests in the work that we do with our children right now. And some people are passionate about school issues because they want to use school as political tools. Sometimes it’s clear where people are, and other times it gets muddy.
It has felt like schools have been at the center of a maelstrom throughout this pandemic. While people mainly were on board with closing schools, the transition to remote learning was a mess. People had different opinions on how it should be done, and many people pushed for schools to go back in person that spring of 2020.
Being in person in the fall of 2020 was a highly debated issue. Whether teachers should be forced to get vaccinated was an issue. When and how to go back to remote learning in-person was another debate—all of these issues carried over to the 2021 school year. And now we are dealing with the non-existent “issue” of CRT in schools and book banning.
The newest issue is taking away school mask mandates, which is picking up steam all across the country. Many reputable media outlets have written about why mask mandates should be taken away from schools in the past month. Now we find many states taking away mask mandates from schools. Unsurprisingly there is debate about this issue. This one is interesting because this is a debate going on throughout the pandemic, but it’s different now. It used to not be backed up by science, and most of these arguments came from people who identified as Republicans. There is scientific research supports taking masks off students, and many Democrats are now on board with getting rid of masks at schools.
While all of this debate about these issues, many of which are chaotic, filled with passion, unfortunately, mean-spirited comments and lies persisted, school has gone on. It’s not like there was an issue with schools. We paused classes, let people figure it out, reached a consensus, and then restarted schools. We worked and taught while all of this was swirling around us. It’s like driving a broken car while people argue how to fix the vehicle and whether or not the car is even damaged.
We underserve teachers, parents, administrations, staff, and students in schools, leading to many issues we debate around schools. At some point, we stop talking about these issues, not because they go away, but because we are tired of talking about them, and then they come back up at some point. It’s an exhausting cycle.
I don’t know how to break this cycle, but what I do know is that while there are opinions, there is also right and wrong. Lies should be called out, and uncivil debate should not be tolerated. Politically motivated policies should be acknowledged as such even when they support your opinion.
Maus shouldn't be banned. The opinion that it should is not valid because it supports an act of oppression and anti-Semitism. Acts of oppression are not valid opinions. Teachers must have the freedom to expose students to the worst of American history and help their students understand that racism and systems of oppression are part of every facet of American life and play a role in every major event in American history. More importantly our students must learn that what has made America great is individuals and movements who have fought against these systems of oppression to make this country a more free and equitable society.
We should move forward in the process of removing masks for students in schools. There is nuance in this issue. People’s feelings have to be respected, and the process is really important. What works for one state, may not work for another state, but it’s undeniable that we must move in the direction of unmasking sooner than later. You can disagree with the process, but to flat out reject this as a necessary step that should happen soon is "not following the science."
I love teaching, but I really hate how so many people talk about education and teachers. It’s really hard to keep this car moving when it feels like people won’t stop yelling. I know it hasn’t always been clear what the next right thing has been in school during this pandemic, and many well-meaning educators made mistakes. All of us did.
So give teachers a little grace. And next time you want to chime in on an issue about education, read about it from a reputable source, and most of all reach out to an educator in your life and hear them out. Don’t debate them, just listen and let them know you hear them.
They need this more than you know. Somehow the teachers of America have find something left in their gas tank for this next battle. It make me tired just thinking about it, but what brings me hope is knowing at the end of it is seeing my students' smiles.
When I think back at the most emotional moments of 2021, most of them are all related to the same thing: the COVID-19 vaccine.
The vaccine changed the pandemic from something that felt insurmountable to something that we could handle. The vaccine made my job as a teacher feel more reasonable, it meant that I could finally see my parents, and it meant that my wife and my son were much less likely to be tragic statistics.
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I signed up as soon as my school sent out the email for vaccine appointments. My school coordinated vaccines appointments for everyone in our community, and I was fortunate to get one on a Tuesday morning before my classes started.
The actual moment of getting the vaccine was unremarkable. I did see some of my colleagues in line and waved to them as I headed to my car. I sat in my car, trying to process what had just happened. I had learned in this pandemic to hope for the best and not to believe things would happen until they happened.
I didn’t tell my mom that I had made the appointment. I didn’t want to get her hopes up just in case something happened. Now that I had the shot in the arm, and it happened, she was the first person I wanted to talk to. It’s hard to know how difficult it was for her knowing that I had been teaching in person for the entirety of the fall and early winter. I hated the idea that my job was causing stress and anxiety to my family. So I called her. Close to tears, I told her I got my shot. She was happy for me, relieved, and told me to take care of myself and watch out for side effects.
My mom was not as emotional as I was over the phone, and in a way, this was helpful. She responded to me getting the vaccine as something pragmatic, something that I would, of course, do. This was an affirmation of what she believed would happen. For me, it was a promise made true.
****
Unsurprisingly, many were hesitant to get the vaccine. Sick and demented individuals played on this fear to make more money and consolidate power, most of whom were vaccinated themselves. The vast majority of anti-vax advocates are Republicans. Their lack of care for their constituents was a sad reminder that they were willing to sacrifice, even their supporters if it meant they could get reelected.
I wish I could say that these people didn’t get to me, but they did. I have raged, sworn at, and felt great anger at those Americans who are holding us back by refusing to get the vaccines. Do I still have hope in humanity? Yes, but after seeing the cruelty of the past year, I’m beginning to think that cruelty is our nature and that kindness is what is truly extraordinary.
****
I watched my colleagues getting booster shots in the school gym, some from parent volunteers who are health care professionals. I knew that some of my colleagues had side effects from previous COVID-19 vaccinations shots, like mine or worse, but they were lining up to get their boosters.
After getting a COVID-19 booster, I sat there talking to another teacher. As my colleagues lined up in front of us, it felt nice to see all of us doing the right thing. That evening the side effects started and the following day. I felt awful. I was achy, and I felt hungover for three days. After I got my second shot, it was far worse. It took me a week to get over that shot.
Other colleagues had far worse side effects from the first two shots, but that didn’t stop them from getting their booster shot. Some of them got rough side effects from the booster, but that didn’t make them bitter.
We decided to come back to get the booster shot for ourselves, our families, and our students. We know that the short-term pain and inconvenience are worth making the school safer. And we see that getting to a point where our students can experience school with fewer mitigations that hinder their social, emotional, and academic learning is worth the short-term pain.
I am proud of my colleagues for doing the right thing, the parent volunteers for helping, and my school for hosting a booster clinic for the faculty and the community.
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People with children have experienced the pandemic very differently than people without children. For example, early in the pandemic, some without children worked from home and binged watched Netflix, while people struggled to help their children with remote learning. At the same time, they tried to remote work, working late into the night and being woken up by their children early in the morning. Similarly, the lack of vaccines for children was felt very differently by those with children.
While some people hadn’t even gotten one shot, many Americans had reached their third shot, and many more were desperately waiting for the COVID-19 vaccine to be available for children. The fear parents had of their children getting COVID-19 was genuine and felt by many, including myself.
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When I turned on the car and picked the NPR app on my phone, the news immediately came up. The FDA had cleared emergency use of the COVID-19 vaccine for 5-12 years olds. I immediately felt myself getting emotional. I knew all along since the beginning of the pandemic that my children were not the ones at high risk of getting COVID-19 and dying from this virus, but still, I worried. So we were careful. It doesn’t matter how low the risk is of your child being hospitalized due to COVID-19 when it’s your child. And I did know that this vaccine meant that risk would drop dramatically for my child.
I sat in my car in my school parking lot after a stressful day at work, feeling the sunlight on my face. This important step, young children having to have vaccines, meant that my child would be much safer. More than that, it was one step closer to all the children in the world being able to take masks off and return to experiencing childhood as it should be. Every day, I am reminded of what our children are losing due to necessary COVID-19 mitigations.
I had just gotten my COVID-19 booster shot, and soon my son would get his. I thought to myself, “we are going to be okay.”
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Getting the COVID-19 vaccine is an of self-love and also love for others. Like voting, getting a vaccine is a patriotic act that dramatically impacts society when we all participate but has less meaning if only a few take action. The COVID-19 vaccine results from generations of scientific achievement by scientists and researchers. We make meaningful these people's work and their gifts to us by taking the vaccine.
The vaccine was a reflection of people’s selfishness and their selflessness. Oppressors used the vaccines to harm others, and many felt oppression through how the vaccine was distributed. While the COVID-19 vaccine was one of our most outstanding achievements, there is shame in how some dealt with vaccines.
As we choose who to hire, who should lead, and who we spend time in our lives with, we can find reflections of their character in whether they got the vaccine, as they were physically able to do, and how they talked about the vaccine to others.
2021 was the year we had the power to make choices to change the course of the pandemic, the course of our lives, and the lives of others. The vaccine gave us power, greater freedom and a brighter future.
Sometimes being a teacher makes me a worse parent.
Like all jobs, a stressful and draining day at work leaves less in the tank to be an attentive and patient parent, and I have felt that in the past month. There are days that I come home and want to be alone and do nothing, but this is not an option. Parental responsibilities are one of the non-negotiable essential tasks you have to do when you don’t feel like it, so I just push through.
Teaching has another layer that makes it unique in how it can affect you as a parent. No, education is not parenting. My students at school are not my “kids.” I am not responsible for them. However, there are parts of teaching that are just like parenting. Effective parenting, like effective teaching, requires you to do set a good example as much as you talk. Parenting and teaching are based on the cross-generational relationship that needs to be managed thoughtfully, and there is much overlap in how teachers and parents discipline.
When there are days when teaching is filled with those elements that are more like parenting, spending time with your children can feel more like a second shift than a different job. On days like this, mental and emotional exhaustion is reached, and you just can’t get off the ride.
Days when teaching takes away from my energy and emotional space to parent are frustrating. One reason that I continue to be a teacher is that it’s a job that allows me to impact the world to make the world better for my children. Work takes me away from my children, so it’s important that my time away means something to them.
In the past two years, the toll that teaching has taken on my parenting, I have felt more acutely. In the fall of 2020, going into school to teach in person was scary. This was the time before vaccines, and much of our more effective treatments for COVID-19 were not widely available. I feared for my health and my children’s health. While many things about this fall are better than last fall, there is still a lot of stress and uncertainty that takes a toll on me.
Every day as a teacher, there are reminders that while being a teacher and a parent in 2021 is difficult, being a teacher makes me a better parent. Professional development covers topics like gender identity and bias that apply to parenting and teaching. Working in a profession where the employees are invested in the lives of children means that people get it when I have to miss work because my child is sick, and when I get a text from my wife about my child and need to call her.
People who work at my school love children. That is why they are educators. I never have to look hard to find someone who enjoys seeing a picture of my children or hearing a funny story about something that happened at home. And I am surrounded by experts about children, so I never have to walk far to get advice about my children.
I don’t love everything about being a teacher, but I love being a teacher. More often than not, being a teacher has helped me be a better parent. I’m proud to tell my children that I’m a teacher. Because even if the most difficult and stressful at work, I’m trying to do right by other people’s children. If I care for other people’s children, and others can care for mine, we’re going to be okay. There is nothing admirable than to dedicate your life to caring for others. I’m proud to do that as a teacher and a parent.
I was sitting at the dining room table writing an email on my laptop. After I pressed send, I looked up, and I didn’t see Lucas. I wasn’t worried about his safety as all the baby gates were up, but I was a little concerned. Lucas is at the age that he can move pretty quickly, and even though our house is set up well for Lucas, he can manage to do things that he shouldn’t like chew on the bottom of a shoe.
Then I noticed the pantry closet door that was open a crack start to open. Lucas appeared coming out of the pantry closet, holding a large carton of Goldfish crackers. This carton was like an oversized school lunch milk container and went up to his chin as he struggled to lift it.
Struggling under the weight of the container, he shuffled over to me and dropped the carton next to my chair, and looked up to me.
“Do you want some Goldfish?”
Since Buffy joined our family, we have had people in our family who do not communicate by talking.
Conceptually it’s an interesting challenge. Talking is one of the most important forms of communication in most people’s lives.
The idea of living with others who don’t talk can seem daunting and overwhelming; at times, it is frustrating. However, it’s amazing how quickly and normal it feels.
Even though Buffy barks and has a variety of moans and whines, she doesn’t talk. Ollie and Ethan are verbal but are still developing their verbal communication. Lucas has a variety of sounds that are starting to connect with objects and people, but he is in the beginning stage of this process.
There are times when it’s frustrating. When Buffy isn’t feeling well, I wish she could tell me what is wrong. In times of strong emotions, it can be hard to know what to do when Ollie doesn’t have the words to tell me what is wrong. Ethan has a clear idea of what he wants, and when I can’t understand what he wants, it can be a struggle.
There is also something special to learning how to communicate without words. I love the quiet moments with Buffy when she lets me know how she feels by relaxing her head on my lap or groans at me when one of the boys runs around the house screaming. Times when Ollie can’t find the words remind me that sometimes it’s not important to find words and that I can show him empathy simply by being present. With Ethan, figuring out what he wants can feel more like an adventure than a struggle, and we can find joy in reaching a better understanding of each other.
It is so cute watching Lucas connect through different ways of communicating. He brings over a sock if he needs help putting it on, carries a book over to me to tell me he wants me to read to me, and brings me his jacket to say to me he wants to go outside. During his nightly Facetime calls with my mom, he says hello by clapping his hands.
As we work to understand those in our world who do not talk, we have to try harder and pay closer attention to other ways of communication. We often overlook these important ways of communicating with those who are fully verbal and miss so much. What if we gave the care and attention to understanding those who cannot talk to those who can?
The journey to understand is one of care and love. The bond between parents and children strengthens as language develops as part of the wonderful experience of parenthood.
There are times when I think about how much easier it would be to handle my job as a teacher if I didn't have children. I'd have so much more time on my hands. I wouldn't be distracted by concerns and thoughts about my children while I was teaching, and I would be free of the constant tension of balancing out my work life and my role as a parent.
I don't remember my life as a teacher being a whole lot easier when I didn't have children. I didn't feel like I had enough time at work, my home life had stress as well, and there was the tension between me wanting to do stuff for work and doing things outside of my work life. In retrospect, this seems silly knowing how much more time I had for myself during those years, but at the time, I didn't appreciate this.
Often, we don't enjoy how much easier life is at a certain moment until that moment is passed and we are in a different life situation.
There are so many things that are hard about being a teacher while having young children of my own at home, but there are also benefits.
Having children has helped me find emotional space from my work and my students. When I was a younger teacher, I put more emotional energy into my relationship with my students. While I still care about them and work hard to get to know them, I'm not invested in them emotionally in a way that I feel that I need reciprocation.
Sometimes teachers get too emotionally involved with students, and there were times when I was a younger teacher when things students would say would really hurt my feelings, and it would stay with me all weekend. Now, those things don't stay with me as much. I'm just their teacher. I'm not their parent, and my emotional energy is better served on my children.
Having children has forced me to work smarter. I have less time to focus on work than ever before in my career as a teacher. This means that not everything gets done on my to-do list, and not everything I want to do can be done. Now how is this a good thing? Sometimes teachers try to do too much. As a music teacher who puts on concerts, my own personal ambitions sometimes get mixed up with what is best for my students. When you have less, sometimes doing less for a concert means more of this work is on the students, representing their work more authentically.
When I was a younger teacher, I would make arrangements for most of the songs that I taught. I don't have time to do this anymore. So now I have to use other people's arrangements, and shock and awe, there are many great educators and composers out there who are better than me at making arrangements. My ego has been tempered through the need to rely on other people's work, and that's not a bad thing. Being a great teacher is not about doing everything yourself for your students. It's about creating the best educational experience possible for your students. If that means that you use people's work from a music method book does the job better than you could. Great!
Having children has helped me understand that being that teaching is of the most important jobs in society, and being a teacher is not the most important thing in my life.
My two older children's teachers, including their wonderful therapist, have significantly influenced Ollie and Ethan.
Their self-esteem, their love of learning, and the light in their eyes have all been nurtured and have all grown because of their outstanding teachers. I will forever be grateful for all of the teachers who have given so much to my children.
Their devotion to my children is inspiring, and an affirmation of all that is good and beautiful in this world.
As a parent, I know how important great teachers are to children, families, and the world.
I love being a teacher, and I feel blessed and privileged to be engaged in the wonderful work of educating students, but I'm a father first. I join other fathers like President Obama, who hold their identity as a father ahead of their jobs as being central to who they are as people.
At some point, when I leave my current job, they will hire someone to replace me. No one can replace my role as a father in my children's lives. As we better understand our own lives, we can bring more of our authentic selves to our students, which makes us more effective at the practice of teaching.
As 2020 comes to a close, I wanted to somehow talk about what happened and what this year has meant to me. After a couple of weeks of thinking, I've settled on the twenty most impactful, emotional, and meaningful moments of the year. One of my goals with this blog to put more beauty, joy, and love on the internet, which so full of cruelty and callousness. However, it seems disingenuous this year to only focus on the good. So I will talk about difficult moments, and I'm not going to twist every entry into having a "silver lining" because there isn't always good that comes out of bad. Sometimes creating the meaning of tragedy can feel like gaslighting because sometimes, sadness is nothing more than loss.
20. When Super Me Becomes Super We
DC Super Hero Girls was my favorite show that my sons got obsessed with this year.
It's a show that is everything that many superhero films and shows are not. It is funny, made for children, not focused on patriarchal ways of conflict resolution (e.g., fighting), and is racially diverse. It embraced teenage drama without stereotyping teenage girls and uses DC mythology to tell stories that creative, relationship-focused, and funny. It's a modern show that deals with tough issues. One of my favorite episodes has to do with cyberbullying, and it was addressed very well, and like all of the episodes were more about empathy than superpowers.
It's the only superhero show or film that I feel is appropriate for their ages (seven-years-old, and three-year-old), and it was really wonderful to share my own love of DC Comic through this show.
Over the summer, Ollie earned DC Super Hero Girl dolls with his sticker chart for school work and chores. There were some adorable moments of Ollie and Ethan playing with these dolls and observing Ollie comb their hair as Diana taught him.
Superheroes can be for adults, and they can be dark and gritty. Superheroes, as portrayed in DC Super Hero Girls, should also be young children and be colorful, fun, and feminist.
19. Lucas' Curly Hairs
It was heart-breaking when my mom wrote to me in an email, "we can't touch Lucas's curly hairs yet. "
After months of hope, lots of research, my parents had decided that we would not see each other this fall. This conclusion and the loss that would continue from so much time apart felt even sadder when thinking about Lucas' hair.
One of the wonderful things about having bi-racial children is that you can never be quite sure what you will get when it comes to hair. Lucas was born with hair like my other two sons, but what surprised us is as it grew longer, curls starter to develop. Little ringlets from on top of his head and the side of his head around his ears. It's super cute and something that is uniquely Lucas.
The last time I saw my parents was last December when Lucas was born, and they will likely not see him again until the summer. Effectively they will have missed out on being there for the first year of his life.
There are so many moments and changes that they have only experienced from afar.
There are so many things I love about Lucas. Every night right before I go to bed, I check on him. I tell him that I love him, and I gently feel the curls in his hair. It's a reminder of all that is magical and wonderful about this child and what my parents are missing.
My parents will hold Lucas, feel his curls between their fingers, and he gazes up at them, smiling.
It makes me sad to think that it can't happen now, but I am hopeful, knowing that it's only a matter of time.
18. Child COVID-19 tests
First, it was Lucas, not even one-year-old, sitting in the back seat of our mini-van, fussing and crying as we waited for his turn to get his COVID-19 test. There were no appointments, and the wait was much longer than predicted by the front desk staff. I wasn't sure what to do. Ethan was hungry, and I had no food for him. I'll never the look on his face as he cried while we waited.
Then it was Ethan. This time we got an appointment, but it was a long drive. The people were great, and they did the best they could. However, it was scary for Ethan as two people in full PPE gear reached into the car. One of them help his arms down and his head still, while the other stuck the swab in his nose. I'll never forget his scream as they took his sample.
Both of my children were negative on their COVID-19 test and tested as a precaution, not because of known exposure.
The stress of waiting for your child's COVID-19 test results is a horrible experience that parents all across America have suffered through.
Yes, I am grateful that we could get my children tested and have the peace of mind that they did not have COVID-19. However, the challenges of COVID-19 testing for children are real and, in many places, are still left unaddressed.
Many people in power in America do not prioritize the needs of children. That much has always been clear. In 2020, people's lack of determination to do what is best for our nation's children led to dire consequences. If we don't care to make testing easy and accessible to children, it's no surprise that schools have failed to get needed resources while the number of children who do not have enough food to eat continues to skyrocket.
It’s really hard to know what is right thing do as parents during this pandemic. We have very clear directives from our local and state government, but the federal government has done little to nothing to help. Hiding being a philosophy of “states’ rights” they have abdicated responsibility, and left the states scrambling.
Illinois’ governor closed schools, and then the mayor closed parks. Mask requirements went into play on the city level, and non-essential business were closed. Social distancing became a norm through clear guidance. At this time early in the pandemic, it seemed pretty clear. We had to keep our children home, and away from other people.
As things opened up thing started to become unclear. Restaurants and bars were opened before parks and playground were. Non-essential business opened before daycares. As adults seemed to start congregating, and having their lives return to “normal” it become unclear if our children’s lives could return to “normal.”
One of the interesting things about children is how quickly they create a new sense of “normal.” Even only after a couple weeks home from school, Ollie talked about school like it was a distant memory. Ethan talked about his class, and wanting to visit but he easily feel into a different routine of being home. Both Ollie and Ethan have given us little to no resistance when we ask them to wear masks.
All of this has made things like "front yard, social distanced drive-by birthday parties" a lot easier to handle. I’m really proud of how Ollie and Ethan have adapted to this new norm, wearing masks and making sure to have space around their bodies when they are around other people. You could say that is so sad that children can’t experience the physical freedom on unmasked close contact play. At times I agree with this sentiment, but there are other things, lesson that far too many failed to learn we can teach our children during this crisis.
There have always been people who aren’t into hugs and kisses, who feel safe with distance around them. There have always been people who have compromised immune systems who need people to wears masks around them. There have always the need for people to wash hands, and stay home when they are sick, to benefit themselves and other people. Children will be more sensitive to these issues as they now know how to respond to these needs.
We told our sons the truth. We wear masks because we care about other people and we don’t want them to get sick. This expression of care for others by putting in extra effort at its core is the same consideration we give when we think more carefully about the language we use when speaking about facets of other people’s identity.
We are not giving up freedom by putting on masks or thinking a couple extra seconds to make sure we are using pronouns that an individual prefers. With extra effort we are showing love, and consideration and making people feel more safe. With a feeling of safety comes freedom. This is not about sacrificing our freedoms, it’s about ensuring freedom for others.
We can teach our children this lesson, and help re-conceptualize that love is more than about hugs, and we can be better for each other.
This past Saturday, for the third time in my life, Diana my wife went into labor, which led to the birth of our third son Lucas early Sunday morning.
Witnessing and helping Diana through these experiences of child labor hasn’t changed what I think about women, but it has confirmed ideas that I have, and has led to an evolution in the way that I view our world and the human experience.
I have always believed that women are strong, and in some way stronger than men. However, there is something more to this belief that came to me as I witnessed Diana move through one of the difficult parts of the human experience.
The process of childbirth is one of the most difficult physical, and emotional experiences that a human can go through. And no, painkillers and the option of caesarean section do not create a pain free way of moving through this process. Childbirth is scary and life threatening. Things can go south very quickly for the mother and the child even in the best of situation.
It’s an experience that is central and fundamental to all of our existences, yet most people’s ideas about the business of being born are flawed, full of misunderstandings, and influenced by patriarchal ideas about gender. If every adult intimately understood and experienced in a meaningful way the challenges and plurality of experiences that people go through in child birth, we would have a very different society.
Cis-gendered men like myself can never experience childbirth. It’s something that I can read about and learn about but I can never truly “get.” There’s a limit to my understanding of what it means to be human because I will never be able to experience what it means to bear a child first-hand. Cis-gendered men, can never birth children, and the strength and insights that women gain from this process, I will never be able to attain. There are other experiences that I can have that I can grow from, that can make strong, but not in the same a women can gain strength through childbirth.
Someone can be a great teacher without being a parent. However, not including a person who is a parent in a teaching community is mistake. Not including someone who has experienced childbirth on a board where important decision are being made is absurd. How could you possibly make an important decision in life without consulting the perspective that can only come from someone who has created life?
There is nothing I can compare the strength, courage, and perseverance Diana displayed last weekend, and the last 9 months. Watching her, only a day later taking charge in the hospital getting ready to go home, I was in awe. It takes me a day to recover running a 5K. Diana had been through something far more difficult a day earlier and was already making things happen.
Part of me wishes that I could experience what Diana did with childbirth, but mostly I'm happy that this is something that she has done, that I can sit back and admire. I love that she has been to a place that I can't go. I love that she has strength to draw from these experiences, and more than ever in my life, I love her.
When you reach out for a crying baby or crying toddler, sometimes you are doing it because you have an idea that you can somehow make that child feel better. However, other times you do this because your partner needs a break. This is what happened on a recent plane flight.
Ethan is not at the age where he will pay attention to an iPad during the flight but he is too old to chill out and nap. So instead of doing either of these things, he would be entertained by one of us for 5-10 minutes, loose it because of some small incident like dropping a cracker, and become seemingly inconsolable. At this point, if he was with Diana, I’d reach out to him, Diana would hand him over to me, and the crying would escalate, but eventually subside. I would figure out a way to keep him entertained but inevitably he would lose it again and I would hand him back to Diana.
There are other times when we lean into the crying. Sometimes Diana needs to take care of something and she is holding Ethan. As I reach towards him, he clearly is not happy and doesn’t want to come with me. However, in that time Diana needs space so I peel him off as he screams and walk away as the tears start rolling. This needs to happen, and in this moment, I know that it’s not going to be pretty but I do it. Diana does the same for me when Ethan is not done cuddling with me but I need a break or have something I need to do alone, like go to the bathroom, which I have done with a kid on my lap, but it’s more comfortable not to...trust me).
Sometimes swooping in when Ethan is having a moment is exactly what he needs to calm down, but other times it doesn’t help at all, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the wrong choice.
Parenting isn’t just about making your kid happy. Ethan needs to learn that sometimes someone that he loves, who loves him back needs a break from him. This lesson is not well received and isn’t learned with some tears but it’s an essential lesson. How we treat other people’s bodies is an important thing to learn in life that you can start teaching toddlers. Ollie learned at a young age that Diana wasn’t into early morning cuddles so if Ollie gets up early, he always jumps into my side of the bed. Ollie's understanding of Diana’s needs allows him to better respect her, which adds depth to their relationship.
Parents have to run towards the cries, reach out to the little ones and bring them close as they scream. There’s a thought that we can make the little ones feel better in our efforts but we do it even when we know it’s going to possibly may makes things worse. It’s an action that expresses our complete love of our children from the happy moments to the sad ones. As we hold them tight in their screams, we learn to embrace all of who our children are and who they will become.
Dan Savage, author, journalist and advocate, likes to demonstrate empathy with other parents who are facing the challenging of talking to their children about sex, by talking about the failing in his own talk with his son. He describes about how he forgot to tell his son one of the most important things about sex, that it should be for pleasure.
I felt the similar failing last night with my son.
Diana, my wife, has been reading Roald Dahl’s masterpiece, Matilda to Ollie, my five-year old. After reading the descriptions of Miss Honey and The Trunchbull, she talked about how the Trunchbull mows over everyone in her path. Ollie responded, “She sounds kind of like a Republican.”
While this was funny, and one of those, “kids say the darndest things,” moments, but it also made me sad. Earlier in the day, Ollie sat on my lap as I filled out my mail-in ballot for the upcoming primary election. Like two years ago, I am going on a fifth-grade outdoor retreat during the election, and like two year ago, I let Ollie help me with the ballot.
I don’t remember talking to Ollie about this two years ago, but I do remember feeling hopeful, and proud. This time was different. As Ollie sat on my lap, asking me about why I was selecting certain people, I felt determined but also concerned.
I think it’s important that I understand and process own feelings before I share them with Ollie, but that’s not always possible, and that’s okay. However, these moments are really hard. For anyone to say they have fully processed, and fully understood what has been happening in our country in the past two years, is not being honest with themselves.
I am a Democrat, and my liberal views have only become stronger in the past two years. I admit that my thoughts and language about Republicans, have not always been elevated. At times, I feel this darkness is an important part of dealing with words and policies that are objectively some of the worst in American history. This isn’t hyperbole, this is factual. For example, offensive racist and sexist comments continue to come from the 45th and his administration's treatment of children who have illegally crossed into America is right up there with the treatment of Native Americans.
Evenly though the current administration continues work that compromises the rights of Americans, there are those in the Republican party who do not see it this way. Where I believe the deliberate action needs to be taken to combat racism and sexism, many Republicans feel that focusing on the economy is more important. This is how I explained the difference between the parties to Ollie, a difference in priorities.
I also explained to Ollie that the Democrats were fighting harder to have people that looked like mommy and himself as leaders in our government and that this was really important. All types of people should be leaders, not just white men.
I don’t think I said anything overtly negative about Republicans to Ollie, but the feeling may have come across.
I tried. Ollie saw me vote, we talked, he doesn't completely get it, but honestly, neither do I. What I do understand is that we got to do better for our kids, and create a world where people can debate issues with more civility, and a place where leaders actively work to protect people's rights and fight oppression.
I hope that the story takes a different turn in November. We need this as a country, my boys deserve this.
I am not very good in large social gatherings. I’m fine in a medium sized group of good friends (10-15 people), even better in a small group of five close people. Drop me in a large group of people during a social gathering, a wedding, a fund-raiser where I do not know very many people there, and I really struggle. I have a hard time knowing how to enter and exit conversations, I feel anxiety over how to move through a room, and I don’t really know how to handle talking over loud music or crowd noise.
In these situations, I often find myself talking to my wife, retreating to a quiet area outside near a bathroom to take a break. I guess it’s not a big surprise that when Ollie is at a birthday party with a large group of people, sometimes he prefers to play by himself.
The whole idea of the “apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” is that people’s behavior, temperament, and personality can be explained and understood in the context of their parents. Manifestations of this can be both a wonderfully reassuring thought, and also a sad, almost tragic reflection.
I don’t believe that we are destined to be our parents, however we can’t escape the reality of our parents influence. Like racial bias, the influence of our parents will never leave us, even though we may grow to acknowledge and deal with this influence in a more productive way.
As a father, I hope that my kids demonstrate attributes I like about myself, but also are not burdened with parts of my personality that have caused me anxiety. I thought for a time when Ollie was a baby waving a smiling at every person he met and came across that my inability to handle certain social situations would not be passed on to Ollie.
As Ollie got older, it became clear that the same reserved manner that is characterized as “shy,” was exhibited by Ollie. Somehow, I feel responsible, because it’s my genes, my parenting that put him in a situation where he is dealing with the same challenges I am socially. I don’t need my sons to help me process my insecurity. I get no comfort from the idea that I am better than them. I want nothing more for them to be better than me, and to teach me how to be a better human being, which in many ways the already have.
The reality, not the emotional experience of parenting, is that I cannot take responsibility for my children’s personality. It is my responsibility to help them get to know who they are and help them understand how to be their genuine selves, while being an empathetic and caring member of society.
I’m not saying that I did not have a influence of the formation of my children’s personality, but at this point with a five-year-old and a 10-month-old, who I currently have strapped on to me with a baby carrier, trying to figure out how my past actions as a parent have led to my child being “shy,” is an unproductive exercise fraught with unnecessary guilt, and theories of correlations that can probably never be proven to be true.
Learning to know and love yourself is embracing the parts of you that you do not love, parts that cause you anxiety and stress. Loving your child is no different. As much as our children mirror ourselves, they are not our reflections. Sometimes we want them to be, but this is flawed because it brings us to a place where reflections of our own perceived flaws in our children quickly overcome any pride of success that we mistakenly take credit for in our children.
Ollie is like me. We both struggle with social stuff. We have that in common. And that’s something I get about him that other may not, and while that may seem like a flaw, I’m glad I share this with him so he understands it’s not something that he should feel shame about.
I know that part of me is with my son, but there's more than just me. There's my wife, there's his ancestors who died in Auschwitz, and resisted the Japanese in the Pacific. He may be an apple but it's more than just from a tree. It's part of an incredible forrest.
Everybody needs a little time away I heard her say From each other
Opening lyircs from “Hard To Say I’m Sorry,” by Chicago
Parents aren’t supposed to spend all day, every day, with their children. Human beings were evolved to live in multigenerational extended family community. Children would spend time with grandparents, aunts, and older cousins, as much as parents. In this model child-rearing is a community responsibility.
Parents are also not supposed to be away from their children for extended periods of time. The essential bonds that are built between children and their parents are the foundation for self-esteem, and positive self-worth. This is built on a foundation of spending quality time together. If a mother is away from their child, and has great caretakers, the child will still likely pine for the mom, and often this lack of relationship will require work to process (e.g. children who are adopted).
In our modern society, figuring out this balance is a constant struggle for parents. Some parents feel that they need to spend every possible moment with their child, and inevitably feel burned out. On the other end of the spectrum, there are parents who can’t figure out a way between work, life, and the oh so pleasurable tasks of adulting to find enough quality time with their children.
This balancing act is exacerbated by the fact, that we as a society, aren’t 100% behind the idea, that time away from your kids (especially for women), at even the newborn stage is healthy for parents. Add the double standard in which we judge women who work full time jobs as not spending enough time with their offspring, but don’t seem to be at all concerned whether fathers who work are spending enough time with their children. In my experience anecdotally, women are far more likely be asked “who is watching the children,” during work or social events as men. The implied message of this microaggression is that they should be the one’s at home.
All of this creates a negative internal dialogue, in which parents feel bad about wanting to have time for themselves and feel worse about not enjoying the time they are spending with their own children when that time is well, too much time. Add on the fact that for each parent, and for each child, this amount of time together and apart to reach a happy equilibrium is different and that this balance changes over time, and we get into a pretty “lose-lose” situation for modern parents.
Unfortunately, this isn’t one of those post that is going to end in some insight to help make sense of this madness. All I got for this one is this: Parents you deserve and need guiltless time away from your children, and with your children. Free from the guilt of unreasonable and sexist parenting expectations, and the guilt of work demands that does not value people’s roles as parents in their lives. If you are struggling with this balance, that means you care about your kids, and about your own self-care. This feeling of struggle, and frustration means that you are doing parenting right, asking the right questions, and doing the best you can.
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.
Last year I reflected on the year by listing ten people who most inspired and influence me. This year, while I do have a list, this way of reflecting doesn’t feel quite right or necessary. Instead, I’m just going to try to eulogize 2017 the best that I can, and try in a small way to make sense of what happened in my life in the past year.
The most important priority in my life, my family has been going great this year. We welcomed my second son Ethan into our lives, and he has brought our family closer together. While there are challenges with two children, the continued strength of the partnership I have with my wife, Diana has made the difficult manageable. I would not be the proud father and husband without her support.
Professionally, my role at my school has evolved with the honor to serve as one of the school Diversity, Equity, & inclusion chairs. This position has put me in the room where it happens, which has allowed me to grow as a professional and a human being. The work is hard, and it is taking me to places that I am unsure of how to handle, but it’s exciting work, and is truly essential.
The 45th has been a constant reminder of what is wrong in our country, and how much work we have to do. When it seems that he could not embarrass our country any more he sinks to a new low. He serves as an example of everything I dislike about masculinity, and capitalism. With every move that he makes, it’s a question to me about whether my feelings are a reflection of my own insecurities. Sometimes it is, but more often than not, it’s simply a confirmation of the strength of my moral character, and the quality of the different facets of my identity.
Too many people died in ways that could have prevented, whether was through gun violence like the shooting in Las Vegas or the hurricanes that ripped through the southern part of our country and Puerto Rico. We could have done better in the planning of cities like Houston, and we could have done more before and after the hurricane hit Puerto Rico. The government’s response to helping Puerto Rico, feels as tepid as our progress against gun violence. We can do better, we must do better. There is great shame in our country in the inequity among the citizens of our country.
There was inspiring moments of strength. Women across the country spoke out against men who sexually assaulted and/or raped them. Individuals like the Doctor who delivered Ethan, perform amazing feats of humanity, and care every single day. Many citizens decided that they needed to vote, and more refused to vote based on fear, but rather on hope. The self-fulfilling pessimism that a government could not be effective, so it must be dismantled, is starting give way to the optimism of those who refuse to give up their belief in change. These are citizens who vote, and are running for positions in every level of government, many of whom are racial minorities, and women.
I’ve been telling my students about the power they wield. They can be minus signs who take away from other’s experiences. This is unacceptable. They can be an equal sign who don’t do anything to actively hurt others, and work to maintain the status quo. This is also unacceptable. Or they can be a plus sign, and seek out ways to make people’s lives better through kindness, understanding, strength, persistence, and determination. This past year, I’ve gotten closer than ever to being a plus sign, but there’s more I could have done, and more that I can do. This is not a statement of regret, but one of motivation, and inspiration.
The two most important things I’ve learned this year is that:
1. Everyone has as story. This is something that I knew before but it became an essential way of looking at people, issues, and the world this past year. It’s a lesson that relies on patience, and grows empathy.
2. Serenity is overrated. I’ve learned is the flaw in the Serenity Prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr. This prayer states:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference.
For too long people have learned to accept things that should not have. If accepting things that others view as unchangeable brings serenity, than I don’t want it. Instead, I say, please grant me the courage to question and reimagine the things that others believe cannot change, but must change to make a more equitable society. The wisdom to see and nurture change in others and the serenity that comes from knowing that I’ve fought for what is right.
A while back, I wrote (in this post) about how even though I love my own son and care deeply about my students, I’m not that interested in other people’s children. I would actually prefer that there are no other kids when I take Ollie to a playground of a children’s museum. While there have been really cute interactions that Ollie has had with some children we don’t know (like this adorable one I wrote about in this post), for the most part, other kids get in the way.
There is a group of kids between Ollie and other kids. It includes my nieces (I haven’t written about my new niece, but now I have two!), and the special group of Ollie’s friends. This group of friends started from a social group that was formed out a breastfeeding support group. Over the past four years, Diana and these other women have continued to develop friendships and I have had the blessing of become friends with their husbands.
All of our children are friends and we have continued to get together and be an important support system for each other. Sometimes just the women hang out, sometimes it's just the guys, sometimes it’s two couples out of the group, and other times it’s all of us with our kids. Regardless of the combination of people, whenever we get together, it’s special and really important.
These kids, aren’t “other people’s children” to me. For example, we were at a children’s play area last weekend. One of these kids was walking around and another kid walked up to her and started poking here with a stick. She expressed to him that she wanted him to stop but he persisted. I physically got in this boys face and asked him to stop. He smiled at me and started making poking motions towards her and I told him with the nastiest teacher face I could muster “NO! Stop it, and GET away from her!” Scared, he run off, and then pushed another little kid over. (Don’t worry that other little kids’ mom was on top of it too). I was ready to go with this boy and his parents.
I’ve wiped these kids faces, picked them up when they are crying, helped them with juice boxes and watched over them happily. These kids are extensions of the wonderful love and friendship we feel from their parents. It’s these families that have in a large part make parenting the joy that we experience every day. These kids are important to Ollie, they are his friends, and I value them because of what they mean to him and what they mean to their parents who I feel indebted to for their kindness.
When we are all together, it's a kind of family and these kids are all of our kids and they will always hold a place in my heart.
It was the late afternoon and the unusually warm fall weather made me feel both refreshed from the wind and warmed by the rays of the setting sun.
Ollie jumped out of the stroller and ran towards the slides. He knows this park well. The play area has different playground equipment for different ages and it’s suited for little ones who can barely walk, all the way up to teenagers.
I looked around the park and saw a woman in a hijab with her husband chasing around their school-aged kids. A group of older boys wearing Yakamas on their heads with Tzitzit coming down from their shirts chased each other nearby while their parents sat on a bench and enjoying the sounds of each other’s laughter. A blonde girl, dressed in a flower-printed summer dress twirled around, watcher her skirt extend up giggling as she became dizzy and fell over.
The other parents traded pleasantries as Ollie and I walked by and there was a calm feeling of peace in that park as we shared the space and the time together.
When you become a parent, you start to view the world differently. Certain things, like going out to bars, don’t hold as much meaning while other things like the cuteness of baby socks make you sentimental. You become less tolerant of people being unjust when you see the potential for this harm on your own child. However, you also start seeing and experiencing special things that we share as human beings.
It’s in the common experiences of childbirth and parenthoods, but it’s also in the places that our children take us. In libraries, parks and zoos, there is rarely strife. Instead what you see in these places, are people, all kinds of people sharing time with each other, co-existing, and agreeing to respect this space and time.
We talk about division and polarization in our country. We see footage of people screaming at political rallies and we’ve suffered at a country listening to a political candidate tap into people’s deepest fears and prejudice.s One of the reasons that hasn’t gotten to me is that I don’t see any of this when we take Ollie places. I don’t see this at museums, I don’t see this at Ollie’s school and I don’t see it at the grocery store.
How we view our government is a reflection of how we view ourselves. If our insecurities lie in our bonuses that only serve to heighten a level of privilege, than we see the worst in our politicians as we are not ready to see this dark part of ourselves. However, if we choose to see the world through the experiences, hopes and feelings of our children, we will see hope in politicians and our government. This isn’t blind ignorance. This is a choice to believe in our politicians as we believe in ourselves and our children.
Parenthood is all about hope and optimism. If you don’t believe that your child’s fever will break or that your baby tomorrow night will actually sleep and not keep you up all night, you’re not going to make it as a parent. Luckily, there are moments like the park yesterday when I see Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream alive and well. It is these moments that fill us with hope.
Look at the world. If you want to find pessimism and selfishness, well, you’ll find it, but if you want something to believe in, look at our children.
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Diana carefully carried Buffy into the rose garden and put her down on the path. She slowly walked around as our sons ran around the path and the grassy clearing in the center. A family with small children was in the clearing playing with soap bubbles. Like many times before, the children got so excited when they saw Buffy. One of them asked politely if they could pet Buffy and said okay, directing them to pet Buffy as she liked on her back. The other children followed and waved at Buffy as they waved thank you and commented how Buffy was so pretty.
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