SeeingRred
It started like any other, but today is the day my 10-year-old son learned about the big, bad world.
We were on the home stretch of our weekly Fam 5k, when I had to pee. I joked to him, “Hey, Babe, I think I’m gonna need a lookout again! We laughed remembering the last time a couple of weeks ago that I scrambled behind the shade of the hugging evergreens “just in time” and asked him to tell me when the coast was clear, so that I could emerge with dignity and dust off the clingy burrs before any cars passed by. Before quarantine, the quasi-highway had a steady flow of vehicles, but now the long stretch of road was pretty desolate. Accompanied by his little brother, both on scooters this time, he suggested that they go a few steps further and busy themselves doing wheelies and bunny hops to be more inconspicuous. Sounded like a good plan. Lol. Off to the side of the sidewalk, just a few metres away, I squatted down in relief. My eyes on the two playing happily together, I had only a moment to let that memory put a smile on my face, when I saw a silvery-grey sedan slow down to a crawl and sidle up alongside my babies. From the distance, I saw the middle-aged driver turn his head and stop a few car lengths ahead. Pull up/scramble/run, all at once. I was there in a flash, and the car calmly drove off. I held onto them for a few minutes, heart racing, full of knowing, but unsure. Running on adrenaline, my mind had blanked (realizing only much later that I hadn’t thought to check for a license plate or even take a photo), but my claws had come out.
We spent the rest of the walk together talking about “stranger danger,” safety in numbers, instincts and the importance of listening to your gut (our built-in safety sensors). We discussed trust (and the misuse of it), inappropriate touching, open communication and reporting the truth. I could almost hear the clockworks of his brain, as he asked his wide-eyed questions. I responded, still not sure what the correct amount of truth-sharing is to raise awareness and build trust, but not so much that they are afraid to step outside into the world (like I was).
It was a double whammy day. Later, he heard for the first time from his teenage cousins about Floyd George’s knee-to-neck asphyxiation by a police officer. Middle-Z didn’t say much at the time, but listened silently, taking it all in as the big people talked. At night, though, he asked me to hug him gut-buster tight because he “didn’t know why, but he felt scared.” He divulged that he couldn’t stop visualizing Donald Trump and the way he had laughed at and mocked this poor man. He wanted to know “why would a policeman do such a thing, when aren’t they supposed to protect people?” He described how he, “didn’t know this man who had been killed, but could almost feel his suffering and how he must have felt.” He asked about protesting without violence and why people (on both sides) were behaving this way. He wondered if there was ever a time when there was peace for everyone, and if I thought there ever would be? He went on to inquire about racism, slavery, and the duality in the hearts of mankind. Again, with so many thoughts and questions that I myself have struggled with, and I answered them with fingers crossed, hoping upon hope that I got at least some of them right.