Vol. 76 - I Don't Know What to Say

On kids and terrorism

TW: In the next few paragraphs, I talk about the affects of war on children.

Like so many of us, I have complicated views on what’s going on in Israel. Like so many of us, I also don’t understand the situation nearly well enough to espouse on it. I do know that my heart breaks for the civilians involved. I do know that I oppose oppression in all its forms, be it through acts of terror or state-sanctioned violence.

But what’s fucking me up in entirely new ways since last Saturday is the images of children and reading about the affects these atrocities are having on them.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always felt a terrible sadness when I watched children being carried out of the rubble and fog of war.

But—assuming that most readers of this newsletter are parents and thus one you can easily understand—it’s a feeling that strikes in entirely new ways now that I have kids of my own. Since they arrived in my life, my children have reframed the way I see absolutely everything about the world. Of course, some things are more abstract than others. But perhaps the least abstract of them all is watching a terrified, distraught, heartbroken parent holding their bloody child in their arms.

I put my son to sleep every night. Every night, after we’ve read a book and clicked the lights off in the guest room that he’s commandeered as his own, I hold him for the two or three or ten or twenty minutes it takes for him to fall asleep. It’s his tiny limbs that give it away. Once they start twitching, I know he’s out. After that, I gently crawl out of his bed and either climb into bed next to my wife or wait in the living room for her to come out of our daughter’s room, where Emily holds our daughter every night as she goes through her own process of falling asleep.

But over the last week-and-a-half, I’ve lingered a bit longer in bed beside my little boy. As I hold him and stare at his face and rub my fingers softly across his back, I can’t help but think of those little bodies I’ve seen in reports from Israel. As I watch them, I hope and pray that the lifelessness of their little arms and legs are just from a lack on consciousness, that they’ll soon twitch back to life just as my son’s do as he’s veering off into the magical world of dreams. I hope. But I know that’s not always the case.

I think of our place in the world and consider how fortunate we are, even in the face of so much domestic terror and violence, to live a life in relative safety and utter comfort. I think of little boys and girls who’ve lived and died knowing only oppression and violence. And I think of their parents, who love their babies just as much as I love mine. And I can’t imagine the horror they’re experiencing right now.

Other than being opposed to oppression in all its forms, I don’t pretend to know what to think about the situation in Israel. But I do know that these things seem to hit a whole lot different once you have kids.