I'm Here. You are Alive.
I’m worried, she said. What’s
going to happen to us?
She leaned confidingly
towards her friend with whom she was sharing a snack. They were eating crisp
seaweed, drinking strawberry flavored milk while the dad of one of them (I
heard him say “so I asked my ex what she wanted for the birthday & she said
‘take her away for the day’”) waited for coffee and breakfast.
Her friend looked up and
smiled, her pink sequined shirt catching the morning light. Well, I’m going to
be a fairy, she said.
Her friend brightened. I’m going to be a princess, said she, and
they were off into a discussion of the relative merits of fairies or princesses
as life paths.
Later I saw the little boy
with the superman figure clenched in his hand. He was striking up conversation
with everyone at the Laundromat while pretty ceaselessly jumping, hopping, and
twirling. When you are little it is so very hard to keep both feet on the ground
& walk in careful straight lines. My mom always swore I wouldn’t put my
heels down on the ground till I was 4 or 5. Tiptoe and bounce was the right way
for me.
The jumping boy was excited
to tell me “I can climb high trees! And someday I’ll fly!” I was impressed. And
so was everyone else.
“Look! I can stand On One
Foot!” and “I am Very Strong!” he said, as he and Superman swooped around.
When I was 4 or 5 I wanted
with all my heart to grow up to be a ballerina (pretty costumes. Also you stand
on your toes a lot) Or a cowgirl (I loved Dale Evans, someone many now don’t
recall, the partner of Roy Rogers, ever lovely, ever smiling. I got to go to my
aunt’s house—we didn’t have a television—to watch the end of the Roy Rogers
Show, and sang along. Happy Trails to You, until we meet again…)
Or a nun. I saw a nun once. I
liked her long black and white dress and the headdress she wore, and her pretty
necklace, pinned to her gown, all beads and a cross. I thought it elegant.
Someone like that must have a great life.
My mother, ever practical,
told me I couldn’t be a nun. We were Lutherans. Lutherans don’t have nuns.
It seemed a serious
oversight. I figured I’d change that when I grew up, between riding horses with
Dale Evans and dancing a lot on my toes.
The future was bright. I
don’t think I ever paused then to think or say “I don’t know what will happen
to me”
At the time my father was a
pilot in Air Rescue in Korea. We couldn’t afford a place stateside on his pay,
so it was a good thing my aunt and uncle had some apartments near their big
house where they were raising four sons. I was petted, cherished, & happy.
I had kittens and a wild blackhaired Italian playmate named Gina.
Gina and I spent a lot of
time looking for fairies. And of course finding them.
I felt safe.
Maybe no one talked of hard
things around me? Maybe no one cried? I don’t know.
Sometimes childhood is a safe
ground, but more and more I see kids who dance sweetly through uncertainty and
brashly through change.
Traveling children, babies, 4
year olds, who sleep in a car or camp with a parent in the woods. Kids who
would love to grow up to be fairies or superheroes. Or just grow up, maybe.
I love their beauty and
strength.
So the other morning I saw a
little video in which a 4 or 5 year old was featured. A sturdy, brave kid like
my young tree climber.
But first the video was a
confusion of adult men. Rushing, talking. One looked so upset, so stricken. He
called out, over and over again at the full white heat of desperate love. His friends
surrounded him. They were telling him something important, something he could
barely believe. And then—the child! Healthy, unhurt. Upset, sure, and tearful,
but not a hair on his sweet head was hurt.
He and his father clung to
each other, surrounded by the father’s friends. The father touched the boy’s
cheek, hair, face.
You are here! You are alive!
I love you!
I don’t understand the
language of the video, but human emotions need no translation, do they? The
language of joy, relief, love—that’s universal.
I put my head down and
sobbed.
They were Syrian. I thought
of children all over the planet who wonder about growing up. Is it better to be
a fairy or a princess? What does the future hold? I thought of friends and
parents and this world we live in, full of hope and fear and decisions made by
people I will never meet, for reasons I will never fathom.
And how I want to keep them
all safe, all of us, everyone. Fairies, and cowboys and princesses and
treeclimbers. And you. And me.
Happy trails to you, keep
smiling now and then…
(the video is here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYQe72F0Mc4)
posted by jarvenpa at 1:07 PM
2 Comments:
Thank you, jarvenpa.
Was just reading about Seamus Heaney's last words, texted to his wife, and spoken at his memorial service by his son, "Be not afraid."
Yes, Jarvenpa, the actual life path of perhaps most of the world's children is very uncertain and we here in the first world, the agro-industrial world, we can easily forget the huge stresses on most children. We are aghast when we see it nearby. Or else we are enured because the relief charities push the vision on us such that we know it is staged. Yet I lived in what is now known as Bangladesh and I know the worst of it cannot be shown on our screens. Some children do not think of Fairies or Princesses. That would not occur to them. Some children hardly think by our standards of what thinking is. So the miracle is that children like these are also buried deeply in a culture and grow up to be functioning adults. Some don't but most do. We must admit the mortality rate is quite high some places among the children.
I know you know all this. Namaste.
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