The train rocks gently as it moves along the track. It’s too dark for me to make out much of what’s outside the window, so I surreptitiously watch the only other people sharing the car with me. They are a family of four — mother, father and two kids, an older boy and a little girl. Not much older, mind you. He’s maybe seven or eight, and she’s about five or six. They are white and appear working class.
It is something the mother said to her son that caught my attention.
“Did you tell your dad what you did in swimming today?” Her tone is unkind, punishing, meant to invoke shame, and it hits the mark. The little boy, who was fidgeting and playful in the seat next to his dad suddenly becomes still, his cheeks pinking, his head down. He does not speak nor shake or nod his head. His father looks from his wife to the child. “What?”
“He cried,” the mother says, accusatory, informing her husband of their child’s apparent crime.
“You cried?” his dad says, his mouth in a sneer.
The little boy bites his lip, the red flame of shame deepening on his cheeks. His sister sits across from him, her hands playing with the doll she holds, her eyes watching this lesson.
“He was scared,” the mother says, not with concern but with disdain.
The father pushes the little boy’s shoulder with a hand so big it could make a fist nearly the size of the child’s head. “Scared of what? What do you have to be scared of? You’ve been swimming loads before.”
I want…
I want to stand up and cross the aisle, to take the little boy in my arms and ask him to tell me about his fear, where he felt it, and what it is was like. To say it’s healthy and okay to be fearful, that this is part of being human. To tell him that it takes bravery to name your fears and strength to allow yourself to cry.
I want to ask the father when he was first given this lesson to squash and kill and repress any emotion that wasn’t anger or some offshoot. I want to ask him what it felt like to have that violence inflicted on him, violence that not only denies his own pain but is now denying the same to his own child. To somehow show him that he has a choice and he does not have to continue this lineage.
I want to ask the little girl what her doll does for a living, if she is a scientist or an engineer or an astronaut. To tell her that it’s good to be curious and she should ask a lot of questions, especially if something doesn’t feel right to her. To tell her that her parents will do their best but that they don’t know everything and even when we think we know something that doesn’t make it true.
I want to ask the mother what kind of man she wants her son to be and tell her that this lesson isn’t one he has to learn. That if we want men of integrity and men who are kind, then we must let little boys cry and feel how they feel. I want to shake her, too, for initiating this, for naming her child’s pain a problem inviting her husband to reinforce the message.
I do none of these things.
I bear witness to the moment, to the struggle of the boy who wants to cry because his parents are being bullies but he knows he must not because that is precisely why they are bullying him. To a little girl who doesn’t yet understand what she is watching, and who will be subject to damaging lessons of her own. And to parents who are so ignorant to their own wounds that they would inflict them on their own children.
Originally published on Medium in November 2017.
If you enjoy this piece you would probably also enjoy listening to this collaborative episode of Everything is Workable with Creating Freedom Movement’s faculty member Michelle Puckett.