While my son played with his legos on my feet, I saw a video of a Palestinian girl who could not have been two years older than him. My son, in his excitement to show me what sort of amalgamated, ad hoc, haphazard construction he’s built with any Lego available to him, (sometimes this ramshackle is somehow a space ship, or a firetruck, and once, when I was convinced he had created a centipede, so sure was I that these blocks were legs, I was reprimanded harshly that this was in fact, a hospital) – in his pure, exhilarating thrill, he tripped over his train tracks and landed on the floor on his head.
The wail of a thousand sons.
Instinctively, I picked him up and fussed over the scratch like his arm was about to be amputated, all the while my phone blared on (having forgotten to turn the video off in my haste) and the Palestinian child, her dark hair ashed grey, her eyes red and sunken, gesturing wildly, asking the cameraman, of us, “What am I supposed to do? I’m just a kid!” I bury her further in my pocket in an attempt to muffle her sobs but she keeps going, she says, “and what are they supposed to do? They’re just kids! We’re all just kids! What did I do wrong? Why does this keep happening?”
I can’t answer her. Instead, I mute her. I am focused on the miniscule scratch on my son’s forehead, as he cries real tears, the salt rolling down his cherub-like cheeks, this skin that has never burned, never been carved into, never threatened. I drink his tears with my kisses and clench my fist. I close my eyes so tight I see red. I can feel my grip around his waist tightening, and am too aware of the dead flatness of my voice as I murmured, “It’s okay, it’s okay”, knowing at the same time, that I am desperately soothing myself. How is it that we can all live in the same world, where one boy can cry about the too-close possibility of scratching himself in his excitement to show his mother his work, and another child can cry about losing her entire family in rubble, their bodies obliterated and drowning in cement, without her even knowing the context or reason behind this war?
How is it possible that we can all live in the same world?
for #NanoPoblano2025
NanoPoblano is the world’s least official November blog challenge. Participants and supporters are called Cheer Peppers. The BIG goal is 30 posts in 30 days. You can share your goal and your progress and your posts on the Facebook group at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1336744293025187/
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