My name is Denali. My oldest son is Chris, he's 15. My younger son is Des, he's going to be three in October and I am pregnant right now so that is also another twist on the whole thinking about what it means to be a parent deal.
There's one kind of piece to this story that's also really interesting. My oldest son's 15 but he's adopted. That doesn't change the fact that he's 15 and so the story of my 2017 is really interesting. I have two kids who are 12 years apart but they came into my life at the same time. My older son was placed with our family in foster care when he was 11 years old and on a Monday we went to court and they said, "It's a little soon but this seems like it's working out really well. You guys just seem like you're getting along and are you open to the possibility of adoption?" We had had some ... Our parenting journey is a really long and a really complex one and we had said, "We really love this kid. We just want to be with him as much as we can and if that's what's right for him then we're so excited." That Thursday I found out that I was pregnant and so in some ways my older two, my two that are here are twins. So one came to me in January, the other one came to me in October and then it wasn't until the following June that Chris' adoption was completed.
So, so much of this atypical year was supposed to be my year to finally settle into parenting because every year since then has been marked with the arrival of the kids, the legal incorporation and reincorporation of our family, the this, the that, the transition, the moving to a house and trying to get ourselves settled and then the pandemic and then the new baby. So in some ways we are still figuring out who we are as a family but it is also really fun to get everybody to be a participant in that and I think if you start from this idea that a family is one person or two people who make a choice to have a baby and do this and do that and do all these things in this particular order, it puts the power in the hands of the parents and puts the control and the vision and I did not plan or necessarily want things to roll the way that they did but what we ended up with is truly a family that's created by the people in it, which is ... And some interventions from the state and whatever else and complications from the universe, but it feels like a team project in a different way than what I envisioned being a parent and a family would be and I think that is just really, really cool. I hate to keep coming at you with the footnotes but one thing that's also, I think, really important to highlight is I am an Asian-American woman, so my parents are from India, married to an Irish-American white man, raising a black son in Chicago.
We used to live in a pretty nice white neighborhood. Everyone had big houses and we had the little apartment because we were doing that school district hustle and I remember when he came to live with us it felt like paradise. He was so happy and so excited that there were parks and people moved around really freely and it was really great and we always said, "Be mindful of yourself because even when people are friendly" ... There was a program that had kids come to play baseball from all over the city and afterwards the kids would come and use the swimming pool and there would be families that we would hang out with and they were like, "Have you seen that they bus kids up from the South side and then they're hanging out in our pool?" I was like, "We're having the pool conversation in this day and age and you're having it with me and you still expect me to send my son to your house after this?"
So we always said, "Be mindful", right? "Don't trick or treat with a mask on. Don't have a fake weapon. Don't do this. Don't do that." "But so and so does it." "But you're not so and so", right? So for a long time ... We actually had this conversation two days ago where I said, "For a long time because you were young and because it was hard to explain things to you but you came to live with me when you were the same age as Tamir Rice. So you were not out of any, protected by childhood the way other people are and you were in a community that has a veneer of friendliness and beauty on the outside. But there's things you think and hear and say and that other people say that I always feel like I'm hearing that make me feel that even though we are somewhere safe it's not always safe for you. We did that very rule-bound thing and then as he got older and pushed back a little bit and did some pretty rebellious and pretty crazy things, we tried to use fear for awhile and we're like, "You do not understand. Things that are just goof arounds for other people are life and death for you and all these things."
The weird thing that happened with the pandemic is I was having a long series of conversation with a colleague of mine who is a black man who has two black sons in my office. So I thought, you have this ability to reflect both on your own experiences and then what you want from your parents and he brought up this fight that he had with his wife where he's like, "My wife wants to keep my kids safe by scaring them." I said, "Oh, we do that." I said, "We don't want to do that but there's the way that you yell at your kid when they reach for a hot pot on the stove." He's like, "Yeah, but how small does it make their world?" So because so much of this violence has become overt, because I can have him turn on the news now that he's old enough and see it. I don't need that fear anymore and in fact, it's like the fear is out there, the scariness is out there. The worst of it is on display. So now I can say, "Okay, you and I are partners and seeing this together. It's not just that you see a nice world and I see the stuff underneath and I'm waiting until you're old enough to tell you." We all see it so now we can shift this to a space of so what can you do about it? A space of more vulnerability that says, "I worry. Do you worry?" But also a space of possibility. My husband's reading this book about the kids from Parkland and he just will randomly walk up to our son and just give him a big hug because there's something as a parent about reading about kids that are coming up to grownups and saying, "Do something. Do something with your shit to make the world safer for us. We almost died and our lives are at risk." So we want him to ... We want to move this conversation or this conversation, even though the world has gotten scarier, has moved from a place of fear to a place of possibility. So like what do you want?
There was ... I guess it was a week before his eighth grade graduation, I put this in the survey. We went to our first protest. I said, "There's a youth led protest, the Black Lives Matter protest, do you want to go?" He said, "Yeah, yeah, I want to go." It was really exciting. He was really nervous. He's like, "Oh no one's going to be there." We parked really far away and then we walk and he saw all these people and it was led by all these kids and he was walking me and he said, "Can I go with the kids?" I said, "Yeah, that's where you belong. I'm just here because you fucked up enough that you don't have a cell phone, but go with the kids. I'm going to watch you." There was this moment for me, right? The cops where we live are pretty good. We've done a little work with them and they're really nice but they're still police and there are still some people who I, as the mom, am walking behind being like, you got your badge number covered up and you're doing this thing that I think is shady and whatever. But so all the kids are walking up front and they're leading the chants and there are all these really, really great young people who are so brave and so thoughtful about these things and they have the moment where they start putting their hands up and saying, "Hands up, don't shoot", and I am just far enough away from my son that he is one of a group of kids and you see them from far away and you see what other people see. You just see here is a black boy with a group of black girls and Latina girls and Latino boys, and they are all just walking with their hands up and they are asking us to do something and you see that you're far enough away that you see that's not my son Chris anymore. That's not what people see. People know him but you see what other people see and you worry because that is just ... He doesn't always realize, I guess how dangerous it is just to be around.
I don't want him to be afraid anymore but it was this moment of seeing him, I don't want to say as a man, because he's bigger than me but he's still a goofy kid, but it was just that distance that you get as a parent and you think, oh my God, he's ... It's like the metaphor come to life. He's literally walking away from me but he is also, through his choices and his actions, making people see what's right in front of them and I'm really, really proud of him right now but I am also so scared and I don't have the experience of growing up in a way that gives me the tools to be afraid in the right way. I went through all the shit that happened after 9/11 where everybody was like, "Hmm, you seem brown. Can I go through your bag?" Even with caseworkers and stuff. This one woman said, "Oh you're from India." She goes, "Indian people on airplanes make me a little nervous." I was like, "Cool." But it's nothing compared to sort of the powerful and pervasive anti-blackness in this country and the real danger to a young man who just maybe is not thinking every second of every day about how to present himself nor should he because that's not what being a kid is about.
