SandScript 2021

and who is still processing through play,
the most difficult part of her day. I think
about all the patience and love and time
that has gone into assuring my daughter
that grownups. always. come. back.
And then I think about the children at
the border.
I think about how those ripping the
screaming children from their pleading
parents are not kind ladies in the
“bumblebees” room. They are men and
women who have been able to warp their
minds into believing that these children
are not human in the way “our” children
are. They are trained military personnel,
not child psychologists. They are people
who have been able to fathom a level
of cruelty beyond what anyone wants
to see, and what we in fact often try to
avoid, because it is too painful to know
that this is happening under our watch.
This country was founded on
ripping children from their parents (see
Washington Post’s America’s Cruel
History of Separating Children from Their
Parents). It is something we have always
done and continue to do. We separate
families when we incarcerate parents at
a rate at least five times higher than any
other country. Over 5 million American
children have been affected by parental
incarceration, with black and brown
families being affected most severely. We
separate black and brown babies from
their mothers when these mothers die
in childbirth or from pregnancy-related
causes at a rate 2.5 times higher than
white women. We shackle imprisoned
women to hospital beds while giving
birth, without informing their families,
and then make them turn the babies
over less than a week after birth to be
taken back to prison. This separation of
families is something our current state of
politics still emboldens many people to
do, and encourages the greater masses
to be too numb to care about. To this
day, at least 600 parents of children
who were separated under the previous
administration’s “zero tolerance” policy
have still not been found, and we are
faced with the horrifying reality that
they may never be reunited. “Grown
Ups Come Back” won’t be true for all
children, and this will have lasting effects
for generations, as it has for generations
before us.
My daughter was born by c-section
one week before the 2016 election.
The first thing I remember is her squeaky
cry and her dimpled chin. I remember
laughing so hard (and wincing in pain
because the laughing hurt my incision)
with my husband as she bobbed her tiny
face against my breast like a little blind
kitten looking for milk. She was so fragile.
As we start moving through her fourth
year, I’m amazed at how much she’s
grown, the interesting questions she asks,
and most of all, her brilliant imagination.
But her tininess still amazes me too, and
her dependency. She’s still a little kitten
learning her place in the world. She still
depends on me and her dad for her food,
her shelter, her physical and emotional
comfort. I can hardly imagine her being
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