To the Children
O children
We have the answer to all your fears,
It’s short, it’s simple, it’s crystal clear
It’s roundabout and it’s somewhere here
Lost among our winnings.
Nick Cave
Dear Children,
Once upon a time, I had the privilege of a lifetime to work with some of you as a tutor when you were young and liked to scrawl your names across loose papers in waxy crayons. You made me giggle. I taught one of you how to spell Iceland. You taught me more than I taught you, you who were joyful and laughed at your mistakes or wavering calligraphy. I thought then about becoming a lawyer to help you, all of you around the world. Soon, I was browsing LSAT guides at the bookstore. But I felt, looking at your gentle reach at knowledge, that I would be better in education. Because you taught me that it is what we learn throughout our brief tenure on this earth that matters, and the love that it instills in us.
I cried when fifty thousand of you were murdered in Gaza. When three million of you died of hunger. I cried because I did not know that what you needed from us adults was not tears but action — and the courage to do something for you. Your worlds are so expansive that they are like bubbles, heaving ever wider, your souls all elbows jutting out against your paper bodies in a symphony of sweet squirming. Life tingles in you. All that possibility, all that flow of ideas from a wild imagination into your homes. Us adults can be fickle and wrapped up in our own minds about whether or not to put this Starbucks purchase on a credit card or whether or not to tick down the air conditioner temperature.
But you.
You have a supple brain, something that can gobble down languages and mathematics and can do so much. If only there were better adults in the world. I want a world for you, a world where we know, from Gaza to Iran to Nigeria and America and back, that you have your education, enough food, vaccines, and the unshakeable belief in yourself that you will change the streams of the human experience one day, turn them into gasping, mighty, heavy-with-beauty rivers.
When Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, the Committe stated that their motivation was that children “have a right to childhood.” And you do, every one of you. I am sorry that so many of you have not been given your right when tuberculosis or war or famine spindled through the course of the human race. We have not always been what you children need. Some things are out of our control, some games are best played by the stars and the moon and we adults get smacked around. Yet there are some things that are within our grasp, our powers. I can stand at a protest with a sign, and I will. I can stand between a politician and the world. All as adults best remember from time to time that we can.
Dear Children, hold on. There is a reality out there where the sun rises every morning and the moon gazes down at you like a mother to rock you. There is a place where your wounds receive a bandage with your favorite cartoon character. That place is inside of you — and that is the very reason it is real. It is also the reason so many of us adults will always be there to listen and to guide you as best as we can. Let me tell you a really big secret, though: Adults are scared, too. I fear the news, fear what a president can so recklessly and horrifically do. We fear what we don’t know as much as you do, even though it is our job to do our best to put those character bandaids on your scrapes and scratches. Please be patient with us, as we are still figuring it out, too.
Dear Children, I wanted one of you for my own. I had names picked out, Viannas for a boy, Carolina for a girl. Let me write books for you instead, stories of dragons and brave ghost whisperers whose faces are stained from the juice of ripe peaches. My own grandmother wrote poems to ease the suffering of her fellow children. So many of you are also writers, starting with your names in those free-wheeling crayons, the thing that you first introduce to our loving species. Say your names out loud. They may be Hind. Victoria. Ashlynne. They are yours, now and forever, whichever name you choose.
It has been a long time since I worked with some of you at Salam Academy. You’re grown up now. Perhaps you have careers picked out. What if you like soccer or football or baseball? What if you enjoy coffee now? Have you gone on your first grocery shopping excursion by yourselves? You’ll find that it is quite empowering to do so. Maybe some of you are considering law school yourselves. When I met you, so many of you were multilingual: Arabic. Persian. French. You knew more than me and still could run circles around me in your lovely tongues. Like I said, you taught me a lot about peace.
I remember in particular when a few of you were learning a song in Arabic about peace around the world. You knew then because children always know that war is, frankly, a butthead. Why should we lower ourselves to that level? It is so instinctual to love. I once read that Tamil means “to love,” and that therefore when you say, “I speak Tamil,” what you are really saying is, “I know how to love.” Now, we adults have to verify things like this, but the point is blessedly clear, that from Arabic to Tamil to Igbo to Cherokee, we know how to love.
