We'll Just Rebuild It Better!
A few weeks ago, my godson and I were playing in a sand pit at a local science museum. He loves it that Papa Bear will sit in the dirt with him, and I honestly love it too. He really enjoys building dirt mounds, sometimes he’ll use an available shovel, sometimes he will get one of the dump trucks in the pit. So we sit there and we build a mound or two. Now I should provide a little context/background. My godson was born through surrogacy and he is half Caucasian and half Chinese. He’s 3 years old and has two wonderful dads who are both native born Chinese. They speak Mandarin at home, and he speaks English at his daycare. Now with me, he chooses to either not speak, or rarely say a word or two, as most of our communication is nonverbal. I even calmly tell him to, “Use your words.”, but for whatever reason he refuses. I don’t force it and we get by.
So back to the sand pit. We’re building our latest mound, he on one side and I the other, when all of a sudden another little boy pushes one of the larger dump trucks straight through the mound, destroying it. Kai, immediately looked at me with a look of several simultaneous emotions from shock to outrage and maybe even some anger. His eyes were transfixed on me, and I immediately understood that he was waiting for my reaction. So I did a double take with my widest eyes and my mouth open in shock, before smiling with a big grin while looking at him and saying, “It’s OK! We’ll just build it again and better!” He was not expecting my response, but he gave some very quick reflection, smiled, and we went back to re-building our mound.
The other evening post election, this entire sandpit scene played out in one of my dreams. My anxiety has been through the roof, not only for myself, but my godson, his family, and many of my friends. After this scene replayed in my dreams, I realized that this too will be OK. Hopefully most of us will get through it, probably not unscathed, but we will eventually see the other end. Afterwards, we’ll rebuild, and rebuild even better, just like the mound. The damage may be great to our institutions, our country, and possibly our way of life, but we will rise and build again, just as some cathartic fiery phoenix rising from the ashes.
