Two stories. Two questions.
Story 1:
Driving up the mountain pass last week with my young grandson, our conversation took a fairly common turn: Donald Trump. I usually watch Colin one afternoon a week and he often obsesses about the DT when we first get together. Sometimes I think he thinks he needs to warn me about the latest threat. (He’s heard about DT and seen his face and name everywhere his entire life — poor kid — barely a toddler when Covid hit, tfg is no hero to any of us.)
This week Colin was especially animated in his report. He reminded me that DT is a white ‘preamisist. We talked again about what that meant. (I don’t know where he hears what he hears, but it’s everywhere. DT is either the devil or God, it seems. I’m going to help him figure it out the best and most honest way I can, within my grandmotherly boundaries. I love this little boy as much as I have loved any child.)
“If he tries to hurt my mom, I’m going to do...this or that,” Colin says. He’s five.
We had a little talk about what he could/should actually do physically if there was an actual “bad guy” attacking, but he returned to DT. “Why does he want to kill people?”
We had a little talk about actually killing people and making policies that kill people. Too much for a 5-year-old.
I explained that Joe Biden cares about people, all people, he wants to help them. Donald Trump only cares about himself. He doesn’t care if people are hurt. He just wants to make money. He is angry at people he doesn’t even know and he doesn’t care if it hurts them, and when he has power he can hurt a lot of people. Especially Black and Brown people. Poor people. Gay and Queer and Trans people. People who come from other countries. He’s angry and he’s a bully. But he’s not going to come and kill your mom.
Silence. Then: “How did Donald Trump get to be a bully?”
Someone was probably a bully to him when he was very, very, young.
“Who?“
I didn’t want to tell him, cuz I haven’t studied the dumpster’s life and I don’t care enough to do so. But I know the type all too well. “Maybe his dad. But also...other kids...and...”
I explained that DT was born to a very rich family with a lot of money, and a lot of rich people don’t have time for their children so they send them away to school. To live.
Children have such incredible souls.
“A boarder school?”
Yes, how did you know?
“I saw it on The Loud House.” (Some cartoon he watches.)
Well, you know how you love your mom and dad so much, and they love you and hug you and help you every day? (He had just hugged his mom goodbye a short time ago...when I picked him up from a park where they were hiking and singing together)
He nodded.
Well, DT probably didn’t get to see his parents very often. Probably just older boys who weren’t very nice to him.
Silence. Then Colin blew my mind.
“If I was there, and I saw bullies be mean to Donald Trump when he was little, I would take them on.”
Suddenly it was as though I was talking to a much older and wiser person than this small vibrant child in a booster seat.
I asked, did he know how we can fight against DT right now?
“How?” He was very interested in this conversation.
With love and kindness.
Silence. A long silence. “Do you mean...are you saying...we should love… Don- ” I interrupted him.
Honestly, I could not believe his mind went there, I was never going to ask that of him. I’m done asking that of myself or anyone. But children have such incredible souls.
No, Colin, I don’t mean we have to love Donald Trump. But I am actually really proud you thought of that. I think it might be too late for him, because he’s just so angry and full of hate, I don’t think it’s enough.
What I do know is there are a lot of people he is hurting. We can be especially kind and show love to all those people. Black and Brown people, old people, disabled people, gay and queer people, people who don’t have houses, people who come from other countries. We can help protect those people from Donald Trump and others like him.
“That will help fight Donald Trump? How?” he seemed a bit skeptical.
He’s been learning about opposites.
Donald Trump is full of anger and hate, I reminded him. Kindness is the opposite of anger. What is the opposite of hate?
“Love.”
Yes. Love is the opposite of hate, He hates them, we will love them. He is mean to them, we will be kind. He is the fire and we are the water. We want to put the fire out.
Story 2:
Early the next morning Colin’s mom, my daughter, texted me a photo with very few words.
I could see her Car Rear Windshield had been Shot Out. Again. A side window, too. This time a bullet also hit the house. This is the second time it’s happened since the Club Q tragedy, which was less than 10 miles away, about a year and a half ago. She knew people there.
She and the kids and her husband get along very well with their neighbors, but someone has targeted them. She is an artist and an activist and not shy about supporting BLM, LGBTQ, Anti-Gun, Abortion Rights, etc., as is her right to do so in her own windows and on her car.
I remember when they first moved in, they were so excited. A little house in a working class neighborhood. It wasn’t a month before someone left a handwritten note on her car about her bumper stickers. We didn’t think too much about it.
It’s been three years now and it’s gone beyond dangerous.
After the first incident with the windshield being shot, they took down most of their signs and half the stickers off her car. But she became vividly aware of the need for safe spaces for queer people and their importance in the community. I remember one time the first summer she lived there. A young guy in a tucked-in button-up shirt and jeans pulled over in a small white economy car and got out apprehensively. I was standing in the yard, waiting for my daughter and the kids to come out of the house. He had long dark hair and a beard, and seemed pretty nervous, but everyone had been very nice since they had moved in, so I greeted him.
“I just wanted to ask, where did you get that poster in the window?” he said, pointing to a small poster reading:
TRANS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS
It was one of six different pastel-colored, neatly-calligraphed activist memes hanging inside the panes of the home’s large picture window. She came out and had a friendly conversation with him. I was struck at the time, how that one poster, brought someone to her door, looking for connection. I didn’t get it like she did, of course. After the first car incident, she became involved in a community collective that has been working toward opening a new Pride Center in Colorado Springs (this June!) That’s a big deal. She has channelled her anger into donating to and volunteering for Inside Out (queer youth services.)
Now she has taken down her Pride Flag. She is doing a lot of crying. Some of their neighbors are putting up cameras and training them on her house to help. But behind the scenes, they are thinking of moving. A bullet hit the garage.
When Colin FaceTimed me later that morning, my heart just sank.
I felt like a liar. Donald Trump’s policies had come for his mom. They had come for him.
I had no words.
Question 1:
What do we tell the children?
Question 2:
Do we take our signs and flags down? Should we take the stickers off our cars? Is that letting them win?
