I smiled as I saw my friend’s kindergartener running towards me waving the trans rights flag of pink, blue, and white. While she may have known what it stood for – her parents are supportive of trans folks – I suspect she was just happy to have a flag. But I was also heartened that the organization supporting LBGTQ+ youth had a prominent booth in-between the kids area and the carnival rides at our city’s big festival. It was impossible to miss, with all of the lovely rainbow decorations. When we stopped by the booth, we picked up a rainbow peace sign necklace.
As I finished reading this beautiful book with my younger son, we read the section in the back where the author (Fidgets and Fries) describes how it’s based on her relationship with her nonspeaking autistic son, although he’s older now than the kid in the book. I mentioned that she’s autistic as well, as is her younger son.
“What’s autistic again?” asked my son. “I forgot.”
So I explained to him how it’s a set of ways some people’s brains are different than the average, including differences in communication, reading social cues, interests, sensory perception, and sometimes coordination. (We have multiple neurodivergences in our family, so he’s familiar with the idea of people’s brains being different from the average.)
I then paused and thought about how to phrase what I was going to say next. “I think I might be autistic too. It’s sometimes hard to tell when you’re an adult and have learned some of those skills.” He nodded, not particularly surprised that my brain (or anyone’s in our family) doesn’t work like the average person’s.
Thank you to Tiffany Hammond for writing such a beautiful book that offers both important representation and the opportunity to start and continue important conversations about the beautiful diversity of all of our brains.
“Baby Yoda left,” my older son told me as I was tucking him in. He was referring to our Baby Yoda Tamagotchi, which eventually leaves with the Mandalorian if you take good care of him.
“Oh?” I said.
“Yeah, I looked to see how Baby Yoda was feeling and he was gone. And I was like, Oh, that’s how he’s feeling,” he said.
“Mmmm, well, you know something?” I whispered to him. “That’s how it feels to me with you.”
Leaves reach upward, branches split as they rise into the air. There’s a striking gap between the two main branches, an absence of tree and canopy. Through that gap runs a power line, the industrial shaking its way through the biological, ecological. It’s nearly half a tree, restricted. And yet, it is still full in its own way, defiantly standing tall despite being cut again and again.
Some days, I feel like so many of us are that tree. Cut through for the sake of progress, of capitalism, of others’ needs. Having metaphorical branches cut away from us, making it harder to be healthy and whole. Letting go of parts of ourselves and working ourselves to exhaustion because the only other choice is to be cut down altogether.
“So there’s two regular swings and a baby swing and regular swing and an adaptive swing and regular swing,” I spoke into my phone while trying to maneuver the camera on it so my kids could see the bulletin board in front of me over FaceTime.
They were staying at my parents’ house (thanks mom and dad!) and I was at our neighborhood community center. The bulletin board was covered with photos of options for a future playground at the park across the street from our house. The community center had invited the kids in the neighborhood and after school program to do ranked voting for their favorites. That day was the last day to vote.
My eyes closed, nearly drifting off to sleep, I startle, awakened by a creaking noise. Is it one of the kids’ doors? Is one of them up, perhaps to go to the bathroom? Listening closer, room still dark, I strain to hear. The noise occurs again, but I can locate it just outside our window. “It’s the blueberry bushes, scratching the house,” I reassure myself. But some part of me doesn’t accept that answer and keeps listening anyway – just in case.
1958? Wow, I didn’t think this book was that old, I thought as I looked at the title page of the classic children’s book Beezus and Ramona. Ramona’s four year old behavior – eating one bite out of each apple in a bag, writing her name on every page of a library book – seems just as relevant 65 years later as it did then.
Endless hurricanes, wildfires, and flooding; astronomically high prices and low wages; biodiversity collapse – is this the future you expect for your kids in 30 years? For many of us concerned about climate change and social inequality, it seems like the future is going to be pretty grim. Some people are even going so far to think we’re going to be living in something out of a dystopia SF novel (if we’re not already).
But while being prepared for a legit natural or human-caused disaster is a good thing, hunkering down in despair isn’t. Honestly, our children deserve for us to at least try to turn this ship in the right direction. No one wants to tell their kids, “We didn’t bother trying because what was the point?”
