These Come Back to Me

I imagine my children think of me as this present iteration only, the woman who checks to see if the toothbrushes in the holder are wet, who is ever skeptical that the offspring are lying about having brushed their teeth. My children are like most in that they cannot fathom their parents as their slippery age, or in their wobbly legs. Even though there is evidence that I was not born into the 40 year-old body of a woman obsessed with flossing (and the other hygiene habits of her offspring). Even though I tell them about times I was young and very wide-eyed and sort of dumb, they think probably as I once did, that our parents may have once been younger, but they were essentially the same people, just in shorter containers or less bald.

What does it benefit a child to know that their parent was once as incompletely formed as they are now? I suppose it matters because when we make mistakes, we need grace from each other and for ourselves. We need to remind one another how far we’ve come, and that no one has simply arrived like an Amazon package, shrink-wrapped and cushioned in a bubble envelope, ready to be plugged in and operated.

Lately I am starting to move from a place of parenting for the present season —checking in on homework and monitoring manners —and parenting more for The Launch. I want to parent with goals in mind, both in order to coexist with these humans for the next few years, and to prepare people who will someday not live with me (where they inhale an entire box of ice cream sandwiches in four minutes flat). Sometimes I dream of this sweet hereafter in which my children text me not from the other room (with an incomprehensible meme) but from art school or med school or maybe the school of hard knocks in which they reveal to me an eternal truth that I imparted to them in some clumsy moment I no longer remember, but that rings true to what they glimpse from their hilltop or valley. I will be humbled and grateful and I will celebrate with a gluten-free ice cream sandwich.

My dad and stepmom visited last weekend after 14 months of us all not being able to see one another. We were talking about plans for camp for the kids, and my dad said how glad he was that we had not left him for two months at a time when we were younger. How strange the ache of children leaving you is, such that during the years in which they are attached to you like barnacles, you can also feel so very much alone. And then, in my own experience, the years my own parents probably thought I would be with them for a few years, I made every effort to divide that pie into unequal slices with jobs and friends and all the extra curriculars I could cram into a young life.

Parents say that we thought there would be more time—and, though delusional, we really think this. We think there will be more time to get things right, to rehearse the consequences talk and see if it lands us in a soft, amicable place. We think there will be more time to say the things we want to say and to take the kids to the places we dreamed of taking them. All this presumes our children will wax strong and remain healthy.

What I long to hear is from parents who were not able to parent their children for as long as they expected. If they were deluded once to think there would be more time—surely they were forced to awaken to the cruel truth that time is a thief. I want to know what the bereaved parents, the estranged, the separated, the parents of the lost and trafficked and comatose children believe now. What can they tell me about the gift of knowing only what we know and nothing more? What can they tell me about the teeth we think need brushing?

Post-Pandemic Activities Where Dressing like a Giant Toddler Who Still Takes an Afternoon Nap Will Still Be Socially Acceptable

As we emerge from our temporary sweatpants society, the following activities will still command a dress code of Giant Toddler Who Should Not Miss the Afternoon Nap:

Recreation
Attending a Cuddle Party

Cosplaying at ComicCon

Participating in a potato sack race

Being a contestant on “Double Dare”

Going as Maggie Simpson to a Halloween Party

Attending a Silver Sneakers chair yoga class

Doing the walk of shame at 7 a.m. from a fraternity party

Embracing Furry culture

Professional

Managing a Croc Store

Performing in a Beastie Boys cover band

Riding on the “Bananas in Pajamas Live!” Tour Bus 

Shooting an ad for the SnuggieTM

Tinkering in the NASCAR Pit

Rehearsing “Peter Pan” for the part of Michael Darling 

Launching the Lookbook for YeezyTM Spring Line

Working the child birthday circuit as a Strawberry Shortcake impersonator 

Spiritual
Believing yourself to have been reincarnated as a hashbrown

Personal

Being Pauly Shore

Recovering from pacemaker surgery

Heading to take an afternoon nap as a giant toddler 

Artifact

I teach an elective in cultural anthropology, but mostly I facilitate the discussion and my brilliant students lead me.

Today we were talking about the power of artifacts as a means of telling how people lived in a certain time. I asked, Tell me you were born in a particular decade without telling me you were born in a particular decade. Then I showed them my Paula Abdul cassette tapes.

We discussed how so many of our artifacts are now digitized and easily disseminated.

I then shared this digital artifact with the class in my Zoom screen:

photo courtesy Ben Crump Law Firm

I didn't share how I came across the picture; I offered it without preface of who and where and what. I simply asked the class how they felt when they saw it.

Peaceful, one student said.

Warm, another said.

A student who is a mother of two said, "That little boy is knocked out. He's living his best life. He's in the bosom place--it's the best."

We took a couple of beats to acknowledge how many of us knew this feeling, the mother and child bond, the safety of surrender.

Then I shared that this digital artifact, this picture, was used this very week in a court of law to tell a jury about how people lived.

Who is this little boy? I asked.

Oh.

Oh it’s George Floyd, they responded. It's George Floyd as a little boy resting in his mother's lap. The same mother, a woman some years deceased, whose name he cried out during his final moments.

That went from 0 to 100 fast, said one student.

Damn, said another student.

Why do we need artifacts to remind juries of people's humanity? Why do we need to see proof positive that we all come into the world defenseless? Why have the arbiters of justice and brokers of power in America so long subverted the humanity and equality of Black Lives?

Artist Titus Kaphar used this picture of a young George Floyd with his mother as inspiration for his cover of TIME Magazine. Kaphar wrote, “ I see the black mothers who are unseen, and rendered helpless in this fury against their babies. As I listlessly wade through another cycle of violence against black people, I paint a black mother … eyes closed, furrowed brow, holding the contour of her loss.”

"It's weird," said one student. "When you first showed us the picture, I felt all warm and now I just feel gut-punched."

It's my hope, though, that the jury members will hold this picture in their hearts, hold it close in their bosom place.