Letter to My Son

 

Mi querido hijo, over the past few months you’ve often seen me looking at our iPad. Sometimes you’ve sat next to me on the couch while I’ve stared at our tablet. Sometimes you’ve cuddled next to me and asked for a hug so I could pay attention to you. One time, you came over and stood next to me while I sat on our rug, trying to watch a video of two Palestinian children as they lay dead and bloodied, their mouths open, their limbs contorted. I snapped at you and said, Go over there!, and pointed toward the other end of our living room.

I’m sorry that I haven’t always been as present as you would like me to be. I’m sorry that I snapped at you. Sometimes you’ve asked what me and Mommy look at on our phones or tablet and all we dare to tell you is “adult stuff,” then explained that there are things we don’t want you to see.
 
Mijo, you’re only seven. You’re only beginning to learn about this planet, about this world we humans have bent to our self-destructive will.
 
All your life, I’ve tried to protect you from this wretched world I’ve come to know. I’ve tried to shield you from the horrors, the destruction we’ve inflicted upon our Earth Mother, the suffering we mete out with the rise and fall of the sun.
 
You happened to be born in quite possibly the most extraordinary time in human history. Practically every day for the past eight months I have seen on my laptop or our tablet the most vile and gruesome things I have ever seen in my life. I have seen grisly documentaries about the Holocaust, the genocide in Rwanda. I have read many history books about America. I have read about the wicked Spanish Conquistadors y los indígenas whose blood courses in our veins so sometimes I just can’t stop myself from looking because I can’t believe this is the world we brought you into.
 
I know, somewhere deep inside where I can’t feel I carry depths of sorrow.
 
I know sometimes I fall and slip into it.
 
I know someday your mother and I will no longer be able to keep you from it.