Today was a rough day; one of those days when the negativity and the bad news get the best of you and you feel like packing it in.
After dinner I was heading to the grocery store (more to try and get some head space than anything else), when my 7-year old told me that she wanted to go with me. “I like spending time with you!” she said. (This warmed my heart even if I imagined she secretly hoped to get some Sour Patch Kids out of the trip.)
In the car, she shared that in school earlier that day she’d learned about a black girl who once wanted to go to a school where only white children were, and how the police had to protect her from some white people who wanted to hurt her just because she was black. My daughter was incredulous.
“Why would someone do that!?” she asked. “It doesn’t matter what color someone’s skin is or where they come from. Everyone is the same. If they’re a good person, they’re a good person! You can even marry someone who is a different color.”
My eyes began welling with tears: with pride over my daughter, with gratitude for her teacher, and with grief for the nation my daughter might inherit.
I was trying to make sense of how my 7-year old has more wisdom and decency and goodness than the President and his Cabinet, and far too many adults in this country who blindly support them. It made me incredibly sad to think that in the 60 years since that little black girl walked into a white school escorted by police, it doesn’t seem like we’ve moved very far. People are still seeing someone’s pigmentation, religion, orientation, or nation of origin as moral flaws and reasons to treat them as less-than. They are still perpetuating fear of difference and rejection of the outsider. And too many are still purposely putting people through Hell in the name of a Jesus who they bear no resemblance to.
I’m convinced that my daughter should really be President. She deserves to be. She’s nearly as qualified, she’s far more eloquent, and her heart is exactly what the world needs right now. She’d be able to rescue us from the moral free fall it feels like we’re in, simply because she already knows that equality is the greatest thing we can aspire to. She believes the truths about people that should be self-evident but don’t seem to be to our leaders right now.
And though her occupying the Oval Office any time soon isn’t likely, I know my daughter is going to save the world.
She’s going to save it along with other young girls and boys like her who have not yet learned to fear or hate people not like themselves—and who will defiantly refuse to learn. My daughter reminded me of things I needed to remember. I know that despite what we’re seeing in our country right now, that we have made progress, that we have evolved, that we have overcome some really terrible days. I know that we will overcome these days too, because my daughter will be such an overcomer—and she’s not alone.
Right now there are tens of millions of 7, 11, and 17-year old boys and girls like her all around this nation with wide open, beautifully tender hearts big enough to hold everyone. They will not allow this country to become what some frightened adults wish it to become right now. It will not become mean and bitter and unwelcoming. It will still be a place where the outsider and the outcast and the lost can find sanctuary. It will still be the place where diversity will find advocacy. It will still be home for all who wish it to be home.
Moms and dads, teachers and mentors, uncles and big sisters: keep teaching the children in your care. Keep showing them that all people are inherently beautiful. Keep saying the words and doing the work of love even if it feels fruitless. They are listening. They are watching you. They are through your example, becoming exactly who the world needs. They are superheroes living their origin stories in these very difficult days.
My daughter didn’t save the world tonight, but I think she saved me. Her simple goodness gave me enough hope to keep going for another day, and in days like these that’s a superhuman task. As we pulled into the driveway, she joyfully bounded out of the car to the sound of Sour Patch Kids rattling in the box like a tambourine in her hand. And as she ran toward the house, the moon mapped out her tiny silhouette and for an instant—I could swear I saw a cape.
