I’m so glad to have two sleeping kids in this house.
So glad...and so lucky.
They were read stories...
They were sung to...
"Shiny"or "Wake Me Up When September Ends" or "You're Welcome" or "Last Night on Earth"
They were hugged and their heads rubbed and hands were held and the ridiculous hangnail that was so painful that we couldn't sleep was band-aided and the invisible boo-boo on our thumb that is only there because our sibling was getting too much attention and a bandaid was ALSO band aided...
They heard loving words today...
They felt loving contact...loving touches...someone held their sno-cone while they played tetherball...
I look at the beautiful babies in this house...
7 and 5 and sticky faced dirty feet all elbows knees and attitude...
and I see the that because of the randomness of the lottery of life, and their whiteness, and the arbitrary assignment of boundary and border, they will never know the kind of danger...
the danger faced by kids just like them...
and I can’t accept that there are, right now, kids like my older who are taking care of kids like my younger.
Or kids like our babysitter, who takes great care of our kids, teaching others how to diaper.
If you felt loved, for even a moment, today
If you were cared for at all, you have more than those babies.
The service organizations are requesting donations of teething rings! Teething rings and pacifiers and diapers...for babies...taken
I’m so sorry
The debt owed by those of us who are safe mounts every day
And it’s nothing new...I know its nothing new. I don't claim it is. I don't claim or care who did it first...
But I wasn’t alive during the hundreds of years of slavery, or the destruction of indigenous generations.
I wasn’t here for no Blacks, no Jews, no Irish
And I knew a couple of Japanese interned, but not until their old age and my own infancy
But I’m here now and I cried when I saw that the service organizations, the charities, they need us to send teething rings and pacifiers.
Because look what I have...and all I can think to actually DO to honor them...
is to send teething rings and pacifiers.
