In the Words of the Children

It’s 11:00pm and I’m stuffing leftover Halloween Skittles into my mouth by the handful. I just finished the dishes after waiting an hour and a half for my kids to fall asleep. The piles of dishes from yet another mediocre meal, not because I don’t cook well but because we’ve already eaten this meal – we’ve eaten all the meals, over and over and over again since March 2020. And I’m too tired to find a new recipe and my brain is too overloaded to remember to purchase a new ingredient.

And the piles of dishes from the lunch tuppers and the kids’ water bottles and the tuppers and tuppers of fruit. And the breakfast bagel plate crusted with cream cheese and jelly, and the plate for my son’s half-toasted, half-untoasted, mix-matched peanut butter sandwich turned upside down – and God forbid I accidentally toast both pieces. And his second plate for his quarter bagel, which he called a “half” but meant a quarter and this ended in tears at 6:30am.

Now it’s 11:11 – make a wish. And I have too many wishes clouded together in my brain – some vibrant like the rainbow heart on my son’s schoolwork. “I love Kindergarten.” “I love my sustr.” “I love my mom.” I wish that he will keep loving Kindergarten even when the kids on the playground don’t want to play with him and make fun of his jacket. I wish that he will keep believing in Leprechauns chasing gold for few more years. I wish that he will never be one of the precious middle schoolers from my class addicted to their phone and battling depression, anxiety and eating disorders. Some wishes are red hot and dizzy, some are frozen gray.

Sometimes I wish to feel a little less. It feels like stress and crisis and trauma are in the air suffocating us everywhere we turn. The world is at war and, just like the pandemic, it feels foolish and dramatic to care when it doesn’t have anything to do with me. So it’s a mysterious vapor of panic in the pit of my stomach that feels made up.

The students are joyful and chatty as World War 3 brews across the seas and we pass the one millionth death tally here. I don’t know if we should pretend we’re fine and keep practicing stem-changing verbs or talk about something real. But what would I say?

So we keep listening to Spanish music and practicing verbs through competitive online games. I put Spanish children’s books out, and 30 adolescents are completely enraptured. Upon entering the room and seeing the books on his desk, one 8^th grade boy exclaims, “Oh my gosh, I love BOTH these books! Which one should I pick?” Another kid attaches a portable speaker to the side of his desk and blasts Spanish nursery rhymes from CocoMelon during the passing period. These are the moments that fuel us from one day to the next day – no further, but it’s enough.

We grind through the days, the weeks, the months. The dull exhaustion feels normal. The grief feels normal. The feeling of not knowing what the hell you are feeling – it all feels normal, and it’s difficult to remember what life was like before. There was less collective suffering and it was less apparent that every single societal system was crumbling around us… but what was it that gave us joy? That’s the part I can’t remember.

Except I do have joy. It’s the words of children – my students and my own kids. It’s just that it doesn’t feel so much like joy; it’s more like constant, tiny drops of water keeping me alive without me realizing it.

Matty (6 years old) says: “I know what God is! I know the true thing. God is everything. No… actually, God is green energy. God is natural.

Last week, a guy went into a supermarket and slaughtered ten people for being black.

Emmy (2 years old) says: “¿Mami, estás bien? (Mommy, are you okay?)”

I say: “Estoy bien, ¿y tú? (I’m good, and you?)”

She says: “¡Estoy agradecida! (I’m grateful!)”

Then she asks: “Are you happy mommy?”

 A couple days later, a guy went into a school and shot dead 19 children and 2 teachers in their last days of 4^th grade.

Matty says that the doctors who help people hurt by bombs should paint a peace sign over the eyes of the people flying the planes so that they can’t see to open the trap door and then they won’t drop the bombs.

Matty tells me: “Guess what, exciting news! Daddy said he’s going to take me to the store tomorrow early to get Mother’s Day things! I’m so excited. I’m going to get things for Emmy and things for me, so we can both give you things. Tus dos bebes. Tus dos gordos. Gordos y gordas. I love you so much. I love you as much as all the universes of the future that you never imagined, I love you all of that. On Mother’s Day I’m going to give you 1000 hugs and 1000 kisses. I’m going to give you so many presents and gifts.”

On Monday afternoon, Memorial Day, we receive an email from our son’s school district explaining that someone posted a series of threatening messages to the district Facebook page, including “kill you,” “you’re next” and a picture of a man with a gun.

Matty: “I love you all of the inches of 1.10 billion suns. That’s a whole lot of love.”

“I love you all the inches of the last number of suns.”

I’m texting my neighbors in the morning to find out if they are sending their children to school today after the social media threats. All three of us with Kindergartners decide to keep our kids home.

Matty: “God doesn’t want anyone’s house to get destroyed from an earthquake. He doesn’t want that. Is God a boy or a girl? God is everything. You can’t see it or feel it.”

As I get ready for work, I think of my neighbor, who is at the doctor getting her first procedures started for IVF. Our group texts buzz back and forth as we decide whether school is too dangerous a place to send our children this morning. I imagine her having to make this decision at the same time as they poke and prod her body in preparation for creating a new life. The tears start falling before I even feel them coming.

“Mommy, if you get taken away by one of those cars like in my show, I will grab something that goes zooming fast so I can catch them and save you. And I will shoot them with my giant nerf gun. That’s why I needed this nerf gun, in case I ever need to save you. And if I can’t find anything to drive in, I will just run zooming fast and catch up with them and save you. I love you mommy. Where’s your heart? Can I kiss your heart? Can you kiss my heart too? If I can’t save you my heart will just crack.” (His eyes well up with tears). “I was just thinking about that happening, that’s why my eyes are with water, that’s why.”

I keep opening PowerPoints and staring at them. Clicking back and forth from email to folders to tabs. My body feels paralyzed. My heart is racing with fear. I keep forgetting we didn’t send our kids to school today. They are all playing in the sunshine on our cul-de-sac. I click into an email from my son’s principal promising she will do everything she can to keep the kids safe at school. The tears flow for the second time this morning.

Matty: “Mommy, do I have a lot of Star Wars things? My dad says Star Wars things are the most expensive because a lot of people like Star Wars. So I’m lucky to have all these things. I like Star Wars. My dad likes Star Wars too. Do you like Star Wars?

Me: “A little bit.”

Matty: “I know which parts you don’t like – you don’t like the Star Wars guns because I know you don’t like guns. They shoot lasers and that’s very dangerous.”

Me: “That’s true. But I also know they’re not real.”

Matty: “Yeah because if they were real, that would be very dangerous. But they’re not real! So that’s good.”

An artist has designed a special coffin for each of the child victims from last week’s school shooting. Superman, dinosaurs, glittery basketballs…

“Mommy, tengo unas preguntas para ti antes de leer. Primera pregunta: Cuando te mueres, cuales decoraciones quieres en tu tumba?! Otra pregunta: Quieres que te mueres?” (“Mommy, I have some questions for you before we read. First question: When you die, which decorations do you want on your tomb? Another questions: Do you want to die?”)

Emmy busts her lip on Matty’s giant nerf gun and starts bleeding and crying. Matty starts sobbing. “I’m sad for Emmy!” He keeps saying. “Did she get shot?” No. “Oh. Because if she got shot in the face, that would not be good. Let me see how many teeth she would lose.” Runs to retrieve a nerf bullet. “Um, Emmy can you come here? I need to measure your mouth to see how many teeth you would lose if this shot you.”

 “Let’s make a skull, Grampa! It doesn’t need to be perfect, it’s ok if it’s a little shaky. Or I can help you. If I help you then it will be perfect. So how do you want it to be- perfect or not perfect?”

 “First, you’re a baby, then toddler, then kid, then teenager, then adult… then skeleton! You’re dead!”

“First kindergarten, then elementary school, then middle school, then high school, then college, then go to work… then tombstone!”

While passing a cemetery: “Ohhhh, I would like to dig up one of those tombs and see the skeleton! When I’m older I want to study bones, because I love bones!”

“When I’m a grown up I’ll be an electrical engineer and I’ll design hundreds of skeletons with remote controls and I’ll sell them to stores and then people will buy them and try them out!”

At 9:13 on a Saturday, completely out of the blue: “Mommy, when you’re dead I will put a LOT of decorations en tu tumba. Muuuuchas decoraciones, demasiados! (on your tomb, a lot of decorations, too many!)”

“Mommy! One day you will be dead when it’s the end of the world.”

“I can’t get out of bed; my bones are switched. My radius and humorous are switched.”

The neighbor boy, 8yrs old, says: “I don’t want to go to school tomorrow, it’s so boring.”

Matty: “I love going to school!”

Neighbor: “But Matty, the thing you don’t know yet is that school gets harder and harder.”

Matty: “Well, I like doing hard things!”

Neighbor: “But you see Matty, hard things are hard.”

Matty: “You have to go to school because if you don’t, then you won’t learn how to do hard things.”

Matty thought we had a Tesla, because he thought “all small cars are Teslas.” Now that he knows how to recognize actual Teslas, he points out every one he sees.

“Daddy, can we get a Tesla?”

Karol: “Yeah, ask mommy – we gotta convince her.”

Matty: “Mommy, can we get a Tesla someday?”

Me: “Sure.”

Matty: “Yes! That’s was easy! Okay, first step – ask mommy. Next step – get a lot of dollars.”

Me: “How can we get a lot of dollars?”

Matty: “By doing chores… or, like, by going to the bank. Let’s not pay any cash when we go to the store from now on, only credit card! Yeah, that was easy-peasy!”

“How about however many minutes of chores I do, that’s how many money you give me. I know, how about I make a play date and charge $1 to come.”

Me: “Do you need a Kleenex?”

Matty: “Um no, but on Saturday I might need a Kleenex.”

“Mommy, te quiero muchisichisichisichisichisichisimo! I love you so much. Wait, “much” has the diagraph “ch” like we learned in school! M-u-ch. Mommy, can I go ahead and chew gum?”

 “Since I got hurt here in my leg, can I be from the old times? Can I patch my leg with vinegar and brown paper?”

“Woah! I just saw the same venomous bee from my school. That’s way far away. How did he get here to Oregon? Maybe he drove in a car.”

“I just saw a car with the exact same steering wheel as ours!”

“Does this happen to some people? There’s a fire, and the alarm goes off and they’re in the bathtub so they have to go outside with no clothes on?”

“What if when we fly to Peru, we bump into Skywalker? Because he walks in the sky.”

“The most important in the world of your cuerpo (body) that people should not see is your butt. Grammy and Grampa can’t see my butt.” (I explain they actually can because they are family.) “Okay, so what about the people in Canada? They can’t see my butt because they are not my family.”

“Does everybody in the history of the world have a different skin color? El mío es como miel. (Mine is like honey).”

“Guess what? One day at school, Ayush asked if he could play with me because no one else would play with him. And I said yes.”