My daughter, Sweetness, is in Chicago visiting her father. This is a normal occurrence as she goes for a month in the summer then the winter every year. However, as each year goes by, unlike I had originally imaged, it becomes harder for me and I miss her more. I like watching her grow up and enjoy encouraging the struggles as she tries to figure out who she is and what this world is about to embark upon is all about.
Lately, though, I am worried. I think it is our job as parents to prepare our offspring to live in the world that is and not what is should be by providing them with the tools (rounded education that enriches, builds, and challenges them cognitively as well as emotionally) and social resources (through connections with extended family, friends and community connections) to survive and hopefully thrive in the world facing them (and based on a decent interpretation of the current reality and now the way it once existed or should exist). I make the clear, strong distinction because many of my middle-class friends believe that their job is to simply protect their kids from the scary bits so that the child is not harmed. Those folks look for pedophiles around every schoolyard or harm chemical in every food source. I think they miss the point-you can’t know all the dangers nor should someone spend their lives in a bubble with a shotgun at the door for the next horrific event. I think a parent can and should give the child the skills necessary to face the horrific event, if not to anticipate it and avoid it in the first place and you cannot do that in a bubble. But I digress, . . .
I am worried though about what I consider the other role we have as parents-that of creating an environment that is safe for our kids. I am not worried that I haven’t done my part to make it a better place-I think working these 25+ years with inner city youth and their families/kinfolk (note: the euphemism used in grant writing for poor Black/lLatino folk) covers that sufficiently. But I think our efforts to keep pedophiles away, put rubber mats underneath playground equipment, recall faulty baby cribs, and demand all children be vaccinated may have missed the point somehow. We Americans (and maybe we Westerners in general) always seem to miss the bigger picture as we get caught up in our “red/blue State” ideologies and our insistence there is only one correct way to see and live in the world. Insistence on certainties breeds tunnel vision. Granddaddy (my father) always said of people like that that what they are really saying to you while you’re trying to point out either an error in their logic or flaw in their thinking, “My mind’s made up; don’t confuse me with facts!”
Below is a portion of email exchanges between my daughter and myself. As she gets closer to entering adulthood, I worry more about the world I am leaving to walk into. It’s not the national debt our children will inherit that bothers me (I’m not sure if that could have been helped. To me it was a matter of do you want them to starve as children and grow up weakened with diminished capacity or have them face future problems coming from a time where they at least had the sustenance to fight the future battle-in other words, starving children don’t grow up to be healthy adults even if they grow up to a health environment). What bothers me is our insistence on lying to them about how the world really works.
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(The follow excerpts have portions edited or removed to help the reader follow the content and the privacy/enhance the safety of a minor.)
-----Original Message-----
From: Sweetness
To: THE MOMMY
Sent: Sat, Aug 7, 2010 12:04 am
Subject: Lunch!
FINALLY! WHOO! Someone is going to do something about these horrible and nutrition-less lunches they keep trying to force on us at school. Check out this article on what the Obama administration is doing.
http://www.aolhealth.com/2010/08/06/school-lunches-may-have-to-meet-new-nutrition-standards/?icid=main|main|dl3|link5|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aolhealth.com%2F2010%2F08%2F06%2Fschool-lunches-may-have-to-meet-new-nutrition-standards%2F
Sweetness
From: THE MOMMY
To: Sweetness
Sent: Sat, Aug 7, 2010 6:05 am
Subject: Re: Lunch!
I heard about this on NPR, I think.
THE MOMMY
From: Sweetness
To: THE MOMMY
From: Sweetness
Sent: Sat, Aug 7, 2010 1:48 pm
Subject: Re: Lunch!
Cool. We're making progress.
Sweetness
To: Sweetness
From: THE MOMMY
Sent: Sat, Aug 7, 2010 6:14 pm
Subject: Re: Lunch!
Maybe by the time your kids go to school, the junior chefs from Morimoto's restaurant will be serving sushi as the Friday lunch special!
Ya know, Obama may not get reelected but I really think over time folks are going to look back at these little things, like health care reform, changes to the credit card and financial laws, and new regulations around school lunches and see that it ain't always the big things (like fixing the economy) that make a president a good president. Unfortunately, by then it will be too late. During President Roosevelt's time, presidents could make huge changes to things that impacted everyone. The world in many ways was smaller then and thus easier to control. Not so much now. It isn't as if Obama doesn't want to fix the economy but he and (from what I'm hearing) the best of minds just don't know what to do because too much is out of their hands. In many ways, it is out of everyone's hands. We have introduced so many factors that those factors have independently run amuck, like nanobytes out of some sci-fi television series.
Maybe too the thought that anyone had control (or gained it) was a 20th Century idea whose time has come to an end. I've told folks repeatedly who ask me, "Did all these psychological diseases exist before now." No, they didn't have to. Maybe your generation needs to enter this version of modernity with the notion that conquering the world isn't the idea but learning how to live within its ebbs and flows is. Maybe you guys will not see "doing better than your parents" as making more money or having more things but a concept attached to other things that are less tangible or flamboyant.
I think you should spend some time overseas in countries that have been around a while, been through some things. Although they certainly have their flaws and I cannot speak from experience having never been there, it seems to me some European countries like Germany and Portugal have figured a few things out and become more settled to the idea that one does not have to control everything. When you make some things better or "more perfect", that pursuit of perfection often has unintended results which negatively impact other often unrelated areas. It’s kinda like the long list of side effects which accompany even the best, lifesaving medications. I’m not sure, like the saying goes, "everything has its price" but maybe it’s more like "everything is connected" and those connections must be considered before we joyfully shout, "That's fabulous!" whenever the new cool product, latest medical cure, or new discovery comes around.
THE MOMMY
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