An encounter on the train

Just after 9am, I slide into the fourth car of the southbound red line train, between, what I quickly realize, is a quiet lull in her screams. Headachy, tired, energy and thoughts focused on the day ahead, I sink into the first available forward-facing seat (motion sickness is never what I need) and pull a slim paperback from my tote. 

As we roll away from the station, the child begins howling again, guttural, high-pitched wails that reverberate throughout our car. Such screams would always be dissonant, but they are especially so in this sleepy time, in this dim place. 

The screams are near, and as I click my head from twelve o'clock to ten, hoping my left peripheral can grasp some evidence of source, I see her. Two rows back, hair in tiny, ramrod straight pigtails, body sheathed in a turquoise winter coat. There is another parka-clad child -a sibling?- with similarly styled hair, and a shadow of a person attempting to corral them. English is interlaced with a language I cannot place.

Throughout the car, mostly full of solo voyagers in various stages of dress and wakefulness, eyes cast, subtly and obviously, towards the trio two rows behind me. Gawking. Avoiding. Disdaining. Worrying. Wondering. 

The woman- I gather she is she from the tenor of her voice- is so tall and thin she resembles a scarecrow. Her short-cropped hair is sheathed in a knit winter cap. She has given one child her phone, but that has provoked warfare.

One child beats the other -I don't use the word 'beat' irresponsibly- with the gifted phone about the face and brow. The woman screams and issues seating placements. "You here, you there." Always she keeps one encircled in a bony arm. The child forced from the embrace resists exile and screams louder. Frustration, anger, sadness, desire all wrapped into a vocal vortex emanating from her tiny throat.

The tension in the car mounts.

The woman changes tack- she begs, pleads, embraces both children, one gaunt arm per one robust child. Peace is not established. 

I have put away my book. I am aware that my heart is beating rapidly and that my mouth is dry. I want desperately to intervene, but can I? Would some foray into their trio be welcome? Offensive? Rebuffed? Based, simplistically, on the foreign tongue dancing around me, still I cannot place it, would I be making a giant cultural misstep? And anyway, what would I do, and how? 

I scan the car and take in others' coping mechanisms. Louder, perkier conversation with seat mates, ear buds quietly plunged atop pounding drums, baleful looks, disparaging glances. 

My stop is approaching, and the children have not calmed. I swivel over my left shoulder, and without thinking, look directly at the source of most of the screams. I smile at her, whisper "hi sweetie," and wave. As I'm sure my children would have, she pauses, musters a jagged inhale, overcomes her suspicion, and smiles back.

She is beautiful. Face full, pigtails standing at attention, most recent tears drying on lashes and cheeks.

"Would you like an orange?" I hold up a fresh satsuma, glistening with produce wax, and hold it out to her across the empty row between us.

The woman sighs, "Take it," she says with a fatigue I recognize. "Take it."

Gently, I move back, erasing the separative space. Cautiously, I lean toward the woman. Cautiously I ask if she is OK.

"They are twins. They do this to me all the time. Fighting, screaming. I am so tired. My blood pressure is high. I am a single mother to these girls. We are heading out."

Her hollow eyes, her willingness to share with me. She is on the precipice of bursting. Of not being able to handle even one more straw. 

I know this place. I have been there. More than once. If one doesn't have reason to be fully dressed and riding into the city at 9am, the drive is desperation. 

"You must be exhausted," I tell her, putting my arm around her shoulders gently. "You must be so tired. I have two as well. It is so hard." 

The little girls are making sweet eyes at me, and I at them. One tense moment has been diffused. I have always been grateful for those moments of dissolution. Those moments of reprieve when I can take a full breath. I hope this mother feels she can breathe a bit.

The four of us get off at the same stop. I will head to a conference that thrills my soul. I don't know where this family is going.

I kneel down and hold the hand of the one to whom I offered the orange.  I look into their eyes and smile. "Sweet girls, will you be kind to your mother? She is such a good mom. No hitting, just hugs, ok? Can you do that?" They smile and nod, and one peels a bit more rind from the orange.

I stand and look at the mother and take in her shell shock and exhaustion. I hug her tight to me. "I know you must be so very tired. Good luck, ok?" 

They walk toward one exit. Mine is in the opposite direction. I watch them for just a moment, brightly-colored parkas and orange peel and the halting gait of a stretched mother moving farther and farther away. 

I exit at 9th and G and think of them during the half-mile to my destination. Where were they going? What will they do today? Will they be OK?

The world spins and spins

“Mom, does ISIS mean Islamic State in Iraq and Syria? Do Iraq and Iran fight a lot even though their names are so similar? Some of my friends said today that they were scared that because of their heritage and religion, they might be attacked. Or not liked.”

Such are the thoughts of many a child today. These came from Jack, a few days back, and I tried my best to answer his direct questions as well as those that emerged during our conversation.

As we talked, I felt such great responsibility. I saw how easy it would be to share too much, to inadvertently generalize, to gloss over his concerns, to assume he couldn’t understand or wouldn’t.

It seemed fitting that our electricity had gone out. That Oliver was fast asleep, Tom at work, the pets snoring. It was just Jack and me and a flashlight, snuggled and warm in his sweet little bed.

I am a big believer in sharing age-appropriate information about most any subject with my kids. I shield them from graphic footage and glaring headlines, but in what I hope are the right ways, I do keep them apprised of current events and facts about maturation because I don’t believe in cocooning them unrealistically. They’re getting to the ages at which if I don’t tell them, others will, and I’d like to have first pass at the narratives they hear and the subsequent senses they’ll make of the world.

This world.

It is full of so many treasures. Beauty beyond our imaginations. Riches beyond our dreams. Promise is everywhere. In the perennial flowers that never disappoint, that foil the destructive whims of even the harshest winters. Animals of the most decadent plumage, valleys, peaks and horizons that will render cynics breathless. History, invention, cures, heroes. Flight, childbirth, springtime, kindness. Jazz, great cities, flan, free long distance calls.

A yeasted loaf of bread rises once more after being punched down; a floury Phoenix of simple sustenance.

A baby stands and falls. Again and again and again. Until one day, he doesn't. He walks, and never looks back.

A whale breaches the icy depths: her unique fluke and elephantine corpus, weights defying gravity for an ephemeral snatch of time.

You see these things, and you are forever changed.

Amidst all this beauty is unfathomable struggle: heartbreak, death, loss, pain. A body fails, a loved one dies too soon. Depression strikes, a marriage just can't be made to work.

Whole ecosystems vanish before our greedy onslaught. A tiny, obscure type of insect goes extinct, rivers dry, trees are felled, habitat is lost.

It’s all too much sometimes.

But I do believe that ultimately, if we are willing to feel and share, we’ll see that we’re more alike than we are different. That there is connective magic in our world’s beauty and hardship, and that we can come to see each other as participants in that.

I believe that willingness begins with encouraging children to explore their emotions and inner lives, validating their questions, and answering them honestly. Only if a child feels confident in having a rich, fluctuating interior, will he or she become an adult willing to grapple with nuance and shades of gray. A person able to understand that just because the word Syria is in ISIS, not all Syrians are part of or remotely support ISIS ideology. That because ISIS espouses one interpretation of Islam, that rendering is not the only understanding available or supported.

Indeed, I believe that children who are taught from an early age to question staunch interpretations of anything, including themselves and others’ opinions of them, will be those most likely to believe and appreciate that our differences are exciting and help all of us grow into more empathic and worldly adults.

Caring for others, ESPECIALLY those we don't know or whom we don’t seem to resemble, is what makes our world a community. We mustn't lose sight of that. We mustn't be bystanders. 

If you care for a child, then you should care for all children. If you care for fairness, then you should care for fairness dispensed in equal fashion regardless of color or language or creed.

When Americans comfort their own but then support the people -like HALF of our US governors, for example- who are refusing to allow refugees safe haven, they are acting with destructive, callous hypocrisy. Were not Marco Rubio’s and Bobby Jindal’s parents immigrants welcomed here? Were not some of our wealthy citizens once poor? Weren’t some of them first-generation college graduates who were offered support because they desired better?

Yes. And as Thanksgiving approaches, I hope to share with my kids a deep and abiding sense of gratitude. Which one can only truly feel if he is aware of what it means to suffer and struggle and want, desperately, for safety and more.

Give thanks and give back. Consider the world’s beauty and all who might not have access to it. How might you change that, in any way?