At 8 years old, K and I both loved the special reading group for the geeky kids at school. We skipped snack time to meet with a reading specialist to discuss the stacks of library books we devoured each week. At age 10, we were lighting campfires and whittling sticks in Girl Scouts. In our 30s, we were having babies.
Her oldest is 3 years older than G. Her twins just months older. I watch them voraciously on Facebook. Because they are beautiful kids. Because they sing and dance and draw things. Because they show me what G’s likely to be up to in a few months. Because Lord help her, she has toddler twins.
Trump won. I watched her Facebook more closely. An immigration ban was announced and I just stared at pictures of those beautiful kids. They have K’s love of books. They run like the wind, like she did as a kid across soccer fields. But they have their daddy’s skin color, his black hair. They look like what they are: the very beloved kids of an immigrant family.
After the Charlottesville hell, I posted to Facebook a picture of me and G with the words:
If the alt-right gains power, they will seek to exile or kill this little guy’s parents. I get physically ill thinking that they would harm Glen, too. I’m not on a bus to a counter-protest this weekend, so I WILL continue to take action to improve how people in positions of power (at my work) interact with people who are the targets of the alt-right. And then I will get braver and figure out how to do that work OUTSIDE of my job. And I make this public statement to keep myself that much more accountable for following through. A year ago, after the violence and murders at Pulse, I implored: WHATEVER PLATFORM YOU HAVE, USE IT. I’m shouting that even more loudly now. Wherever in your daily life you can take that extra step, take it!
And K wrote back: “LOVE YOU. With you. You are not alone. I’m so angry right now, have been, but am standing by this hope love light thing. You rock, lady. Hugs to the whole family!!”
And I cried. I cried for K and I, the good girls from a nice town in a quiet state, who were both so lucky to fall in love with good people. We were so lucky to have kids. We both have reasons to look at the small faces of small children and know how impossible it is that these children exist, that we exist, that we are parenting them. I cried for these small children of ours, who we want so desperately to shield from the dangers that come from this simple fact: we love our spouses. If we hadn’t loved good people, if we hadn’t started families that were so dearly wanted, these children wouldn’t be the faces of a mixed-race, mixed-national-origin family and of a queer family.
And I cried most because she’s home in the way childhood friends are home. She is home and she is holding her babies as tightly as I hold mine. She is home and she’s showing up at protests, too. When we were gangly-legged 8 year olds out on a playground, our teachers may not have known that someday we would be two parents with families in jeopardy, carrying ourselves with a fierceness that the nice girls in book club never had.
She is home and she is courage and compassion in action.
This Family is Sacred 