Things My Kids Teach Me II: Hell on Earth
I woke up to terror.
Today, instead of sun and clouds and light, I woke up to an orange glow of smoke and impending doom. First, I thought that our time was up and the fires finally arrived. I looked at my sweet babies and my hubby. I don’t want today to be their last day, I thought. I could die, but my kids should get to see the other side of this; they should get to know how wonderful the world can be.
I checked the news and CalFire’s twitter. Once I realized that the fires were still far away, I relaxed—a very little. But the dread remained.
Can we go outside at all? I opened the door to take a whiff. The air quality wasn’t so bad. Maybe I could give them 10 minutes of play outside…maybe.
My daughter runs up behind me and looks out the door. She becomes quite excited, “It looks like Halloween!” By the furrow in her brow, I could tell her brain was hard at work. If it’s Halloween, then its fall. It’s getting colder. Then, in true Libra fashion, she yelled, “It’s my birthday!!!”
I don’t know how she could possibly look at the same hellscape I was seeing and rejoice.
These kids are my saving grace. They remind me how easy joy is. They teach me that even hell on earth can’t take joy because hell didn’t give it—something stronger than hell did. She brought that joy with her from whatever slice of heaven she lived in before she came to my womb.
I don’t know where I lost it, but I know that protecting her joy as long as I’m here is my primary responsibility.
This means I have to fight to save our planet and heal mother earth because, if my daughter sees too many mornings like this, she may lose the ability to make it joyous. I have to fight for the transfer of wealth from greedy corporations and our violent, militaristic institutions into low-income communities so she can properly be her social butterfly self; the kind of kid who takes every negative thing around her and weaves it into a cocoon so, when she’s ready, she can push through it and fly over and away from everything that would keep her from freedom.
The current leaders of our nation are terrorists. My daughter reminds me that you can’t negotiate with terrorists. Instead, terrorism’s defeat may lie in that slice of heaven we brought with us into our mother’s wombs. That’s how my ancestor’s survived. That’s how we’ll survive.
I woke up to terror. I started writing out of dread. I’ll rest with joy.
My kids remind me that, even with hell rising on earth, I can still be joyous. I can still find peace. We are the sun. And that—well—when I think about that, it feels like it really must be my birthday!