That feeling at the end of the day. Probably a long day where you had to say, “Hurry up!” and “Let’s go!” and repeat simple commands over and over again until you finally had to say it in a ‘mean’ voice that made your little one cry and then they still weren’t actually doing what you asked them to do because now they need a hug because you yelled. After that. After you wrangled them into pajamas and read the same story you’ve been reading for months that you secretly edit a bit to make a little shorter or a little less scary? After you heard about their favorite part of the day. Or tried to follow the threads of a story they’re telling you. After you stumbled your way through a question about the universe that is just too big for bedtime. After that. When you’re humming a scrap of song because you just don’t have any words left.
That moment when they fall asleep in your lap. Even when they smell a bit like summer and a bit like strawberry toothpaste and a bit like the peanut butter toast from breakfast (still!). Even when their newly impossibly long ‘big kid’ legs don’t quite fit the way they used to. When their breathing slows and they totally sink into you. When you know deep in the cells of your body that you are their safe place. The two of you are meant to be together. That complete rightness of being her mama or his daddy or whatever combination of titles explains your connection.
That feeling when you think, “Anything.” I would do anything for this baby. Who is maybe not a baby anymore but will always be my baby. I long for you to have had this moment as a parent.* I long for you to remember it. Not just as a memory but as a real sensation of your child’s sweet heaviness against you breathing rhythmically, utterly trusting in you. Utterly safe with you.
I think of this feeling as a universal, biological, human right. The right to that feeling of knowing you are your child’s safe place. The rightness of that feeling is a right. Children have a right to be with their parents, to sink into them in a way they just don’t with anyone else. Parents have the right to wrap their arms around their children and be filled with gratitude and love and know they are safe.
This human right. This feeling. This is what I think of when I hear of another Black person murdered at the hands of the police. This feeling is what I think of when I imagine children still locked in cages, torn from their parents who were simply trying to keep them safe. This feeling when I think of COVID ravaging the Native American communities, killing families, and tribal leaders. How can we recover from such trauma? From such wrongness?
How can I help you, in your family, to remember that connection, create safety again? How can I help you see that sweet little one in your snarling or silent teen? How can I help them feel truly safe and loved with you again? How can we restore rightness?
We belong to one another. We are wired for connection. We must demand and create systems that serve and protect our basic, human rights. Let’s demand more from our leaders. Silence is complicity.
*And yes, I long for my daughter’s biological parents to have had this feeling with her. I long for her to have had this moment with them. Adoption, too, is part of our broken systems.
