Bad News

Elected officials as corporate puppets, the longest war in American history, terrorism, gun violence, drone strikes, climate change. Any of you still reading? It's easy to want to look away, throw our hands in the air.

It's hard to contemplate the world that our children will inherit.

I remember Walter Cronkite in black and white voicing over horrific pictures of children whose bodies were distorted, ravaged by hunger. Stick legs carrying bloated stomachs. Arms too weak to swat the flies away from their faces. The eyes of the mothers were animated with anguish.

My father sat on the couch watching, too. The images didn't seem bother him like they did me. Looking back on it now, I think I misread his helplessness for callousness.

I asked him why their stomachs looked like they did. My father, the scientist, could answer that question. When I asked him why we let children die from hunger, the scientific method seemed to fail him.

"It's complicated."

I remember thinking that I would do better, if I were a grown-up.

That day, my father fell off the pedestal on which I had placed him. Sooner or later, all parents fall, like Icarus flying too close to the sun.

We are not invincible, like our children believe. Like we would like them to think. Like I believed my father was back then.

Right now, Claire is ignorant to the suffering of the world. I am her sun. She circles me confidently and predictably, like a planet.

She will come to expect answers one day. As she should. As we all do.

Really, I'm stuck with a question though. I ask myself the question that I posed to my father then; Why is it so complicated?

I can answer it the same way my father did...I don't know.


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How Does Your Garden Grow?

Claire liked Thanksgiving at her grandfather's house in Florida. She would run up and down the sidewalk in front of the house in the sun. "Moon! Moon! Moon!" she called out to the big sky, even though it was the middle of the day.

Then, a popping sound brought her to a dead stop. The quality of her voice changed. "Loud," she said tentatively, while her legs carried her backwards. "Pop…Pop…Pop, Pop," rang out in rapid fire. She raced to my side and cried, "Loud!" This time with more conviction. I tried soothing her, but she couldn't get used to the sound. Eventually, we went inside.

Claire was hearing a firing range about a mile away from our gated community. It seemed counterintuitive to say to her that everything was alright. After all, gunfire should be feared. But it was unsettling to see her so upset. There really wasn't any danger anyway. And I was angry that she couldn't continue to play. I wished that I could explain to her that it was ok to ignore the popping sound, like the rest of us do.

Just like I've learned to ignore that people fear their children dying everyday. The sound of the firing range began to feel real to me too. I tried to imagine what I would tell my daughter then. I pictured what a fear-filled life would look like. I envisioned my daughter's world shrinking to fit into a small, sheltered place. I thought of the unimaginable happening.

Oh, but I think too much; I went too far with the last bit. So I reminded myself that it was only a firing range, that we were free from harm behind gates and privilege.

I felt safer again. I felt thankful for our life.

But I had gone back to ignoring. And I felt ashamed of myself.