A Day of Parenting Through Apocalypse

This piece was reshaped in fall 2023 to share out loud at the Truth In Comedy showcase on August 25th in Salt Lake City.

little one
i want to show you
this stunning, abundant world

but instead
i have to tell you
how we are
and let that break your heart
so that you can change

i’m sorry for the burden
i’m sorry for the truth
i’m sorry for the pale pale time
that we live in

i want you to dream so big
but first
i have to wake you up

–adrienne maree brown, excerpt from “An Emergent Strategy Response to Mass Shootings”

It’s a summer morning in 2022 and I’ve woken up late after a rough night of sleep with my kid Luca, who was just about to turn 4 at that time. I’ve missed summer camp drop off, and it’s totally messed with my work plans for the day, but I “let it go, let it goooo” as we parents must, and turn it into an adventure day!

We end up at the Gateway splash pad, and while Luca runs around, I check my phone. I’ve received an email from my ex. We’re in the middle of trying to mediate if and how we’ll rebuild the trust to co-parent after a bad breakup. My jerk reaction lets me know it’s probably better to let that go too, but I’ve already succeeded at emotional regulation all morning! What could go wrong? 

I open it, read a bunch of stuff I don’t want to hear, and am in my head about it for the next hour, making it difficult to connect with Luca, who senses my lack of presence and becomes increasingly less cooperative. We end up at the Clark Planetarium, where there’s enough going on to distract him and let me coast in my thoughts. Though, every time we go there, I get super bummed out thinking about Northrop Grumman, the company that sponsors the planetarium through the money they make off manufacturing weapons that kill children in other countries. So now I expect you all to be stoned AND depressed while you watch the Pink Floyd laser show…

I’m on the dark side of the mood as we walk out of the building and head to our car, but Luca isn’t ready to go and starts to wander in the opposite direction, towards a street lined with 5-6 cop cars. I turn and see a handful of officers with six Black boys, all likely under 13, sitting against the east wall of the planetarium, looking terrified. 

My heart starts to beat faster as I look down at my own little Black boy and pick him up, frozen as I’m flooded with emotion taking in the scene: No parents in sight, no one else on the street other than the boys and the cops, and one of the officers looks like he’s interrogating them, but no weapons have been pulled. 

Cops have scared me long before the murders of Black people at the hands of police became national news that sparked mass protests. I’ve been an illegal immigrant for most of my life, told to stay out of trouble to keep me from getting deported by ICE. I’ve been in domestic violence situations where the police ignored me, and once, arrested me, despite my calls for their help. And I’ve been involved in peaceful street protests where the cops aggressively threatened us and arrested my friends for exercising our civil rights. 

It’s been real easy for me to believe cops are a problem.

But I can’t let these experiences overwhelm me now. I take a deep breath to ground me in my full consciousness, consider what I can do in this moment that will keep me, my child, and these children as safe as possible, and decide to stand close enough the cops know they’re being watched – calmly, quietly playing with Luca. 

Of course, they come over and try to intimidate me into leaving, but I use it as an opportunity to ask questions. They say the kids have allegedly vandalized some seats on the train, but they can’t tell me why the situation requires a whole fleet of cops or what they’re going to do with them. One of the officers tries to neutralize my concerns by putting on a smile and talking to Luca. I tense up, worried Luca will sense the feelings I’m trying to bury and react accordingly, but he’s friendly back. 

A couple of people – all white men – pass by the scene without looking twice, and for a moment, I wonder if I’m doing the right thing. But finally, a young Black trans person on a bicycle stops and asks me what’s going on. They go up to the boys, right in front of the cops, check in on how they’re doing, and advise them to stay quiet. A white woman in a business casual outfit does the same, and with the confidence of a lawyer, admonishes the police for holding the kids without a parent present, and starts making phone calls. A Latina mom and her two teenage daughters join us next, offering to play with Luca as we stand there, promising to stay until we know these kids are headed home. I feel the cops becoming more and more insecure by our gaze. 

After an hour, Luca gets too unruly to contain, so the other mom takes my number and promises to message me an update. Ten minutes later, I get a text telling me the cops have decided to let the kids go since they can’t reach their parents. I send out a prayer that they’ll be given grace, whatever’s next for them. 

Now, I have to explain all of this to my almost 4-year-old. It’s not the first time we’ve talked about the police because there’s pro-cop propaganda everywhere – anyone heard of Puppy Patrol? I’ve told Luca cops are good humans, just like us, but their jobs are bad. They force people to obey rules that aren’t always fair, and the ways they do that sometimes hurt people. I’ve told him that we should avoid them, but be quiet and kind if they ask us questions. That what we see on TV about them keeping us safe isn’t always true. That we have to find other ways to keep each other safe so that people don’t have to be cops anymore.

Luca asks lots of questions that I try to answer in age-appropriate ways that won’t make him feel in danger. Our conversation ends up on the topic of prisons, which he’s been sensitive about since, as a two year old, he asked me why the macaws at the Tracy Aviary were trying to break out of their cages. I replied with a question: “Would you like to live in a cage?” to which, after some reflection, Luca responded that when he grows up, he’s going to break all the cages and release all the animals. The Animal Liberation Front should really be recruiting toddlers at the zoo…

Back to the conversation at hand… After a round of questions, Luca goes quiet for a while, then says, “Remember your friend who helps get kids out of cages? I want to see him.” 

It takes me by surprise that he’s made a connection at this moment with my friend Carlos, who’s a community organizer for migrant justice. I had shown Luca some photos of him on Instagram because he was coming to visit soon, and Luca had snatched my phone out of my hands, scrolling until he found the most interesting and hard to explain thing he could find: some photos of kids in a migrant detention center. I think every politician and border patrol officer should have to explain those photos to a 3 year old, and then take a long look in the mirror. 

After our conversation, I drop Luca off at my ex’s house for their weekly time together, and head home to write a response to their email. I cry through most of it, using the pain I feel between us to feel the pain of the world, to keep me from making what I witnessed and had to explain to my kid normal and numbing. In the email, I write: “I feel safe when I feel seen by my community, in my mistakes, in my glory. When I feel seen as human. Because that is what I believe in most, that is what I believe will help us all live into our humanity – by showing each other who we are, by living what we believe in.”

That night, I’m in Luca’s room trying to get his pjs on when I find a moth fluttering on the floor. 

“Let’s get it outside,” I tell him, and leave him to cup it in his hands while I go open the front door. But I hear him stomp on the ground, so I come back to the room. 

“I killed it,” he tells me, searching my face for a reaction. I keep my expression neutral and calmly ask him why, and he explains that it had moved in his hands and scared him. 

“I understand,” I respond empathetically, “but you took its life.” 

He pauses, then asks, “What if someone kills me?”

I pause to think. “Well… what would you want to happen to someone who kills you?”

“Someone should kill them, and then someone should kill that person until everyone is just skeletons.”

“Hmmm… sounds like there would be no one left if we did that.”

“Then we should kill all the moths.”

“Moths are part of Mother Earth just like us, we need them in our ecosystem. Can I share a different idea?”

“Okay.”

“What if we take this moth and give it back to Mother Earth, tell her sorry, and next time we find a moth, we help it get outside?”

“I want you to do it.”

“I can go with you, but you killed the moth so the apology needs to come from you for Mother Earth to listen.”

“I want to go to bed, I’m cold.”

“Ok. I’ll leave the moth here, in case you decide to do it later.”

The next morning, I forget about the moth and the apology as I make Luca’s breakfast. He eats it in the kitchen as I get ready in my room. I hear him singing to himself, a song that turns into lyrics about the earth, and then I hear him pause and say, “I’m sorry for killing that moth in the night, Mother Earth.”