When my oldest was in the second grade, she placed second in a statewide essay contest for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The assignment was to write an essay based on his quote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” I was never given the opportunity to read her essay, so I was super excited to hear her read it aloud at a local event.
There I sat, beaming with pride in the front row, as she took the stage. This was, at that point, the biggest moment in her life. She started strong, naming the quote and speaking clearly. And then I heard her talking about a time her sister had bitten her and hadn’t gotten into trouble.
Wait.
What?
She went on to state how unfair it had been to her that her sister wasn’t punished for the biting aggression. I heard people belly laughing. I chuckled, too, but I can remember sitting there feeling like the worst mom in the world. I never intended to be unjust. And I never would have dreamed that I would be exposed publicly for some ill deed that I didn’t even realize I had committed.
Okay, honestly, I’m embellishing this a little bit. I did laugh when she read her essay. True, a part of me was shocked because never had she talked to me about any of this, but I felt it was a minimal attack on my parenting skills. In fact, someone sent a screenshot to me later that day of a Facebook post and I couldn’t wait to share it. People loved it. She was even told by a local pastor that he was going to build his sermon for that week around her speech.
The thing that bothered me about it was that I didn’t remember the incident, and not because biting was a frequent or everyday thing in our house. It probably happened quickly while I had 30 other things on my mind or while we were in the car or … or …
I probably quickly acknowledged it, eliminated the threat, and kept moving because that’s what I do. It probably never occurred to me to check in with my chick other than with an “Are you okay? Let me see,” probably followed by a flippant, “Oh, you’re fine.”
I never thought about needing to check in with her feelings about it, and especially from the vantage point of her sister not getting “in trouble” for doing it in the first place. It’s easy for us to steamroll over our youth and forget they have feelings and reactions to incidents. Adults want things to go one way, our way, so we don’t always acknowledge the fact that kids, especially young ones, can be in bad moods or need a break at times. We’re their authority figures and come at them with a list of expectations and justify shutting them down in the name of what’s best for them.
Last week, some conversations took place with my oldest, who is now a senior, and a group for scientists who wanted to talk to her about how she envisions our state, this government’s legacy, when she is an adult and has kids and grandkids. Admittedly, I have said, “I can’t imagine how bad (this) will be by the time I have grandkids,” but I’ve never taken the time to talk to my kids about how they view their future state. We always talk about social and economic justice issues, but other things, such as the environment, never come up.
My kids don’t plan on staying here in West By God Virginia because of the lack of opportunity, the smothering inequities, and lack of inclusion, to be honest. They want diversity and equity. They want their friends to be treated well. They want people to know better so they can do better, and that seems to be farfetched here at times. There’s also the argument for living somewhere that already embraces these things or choosing to stay where you either walk through quicksand trying to create them or exhaust yourself into complacency. I often think if I would have known in my 20s what I know now that I would’ve left, too.
We need to check in with our youth. What do they want and need from our state they’re not getting? How do we get them involved in working to build that? How does someone who’s 18 years old prioritize the list of state needs compared to someone who’s 50? And how do we decide where to start?
Time doesn’t stop for anyone. I think it’s time we truly begin thinking about the legacy we’ll leave to future generations because “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”- Martin Luther King Jr.
Onward,
Amy Jo
