The voices echo across the concrete barracks, through the small huddled bodies, above all those wide searching eyes.
Donde esta mi Mama? Donde esta mi Papa?
And somewhere, not near enough, the parents wail the other half of the duet: Donde esta mi niños? Donde esta mi bebe?
A chorus of desperate cries rises across border towns, rises above our collective apathy, rises into my re-stitched heart, in Seward Alaska, where I sit in a trailer, my son nestled in a bunk a few feet away (my daughter gone but safely roosted in her grandparents' nest)-- and my privilege bursts through these tin seams as I reflect on a Father’s day spent paddling in Resurrection Bay, where a humpback whale surfaced close enough for us to hear the deep creature breathe.
Whales know no borders. No party lines.
They travel between countries, without the labels of a castaway—immigrant, foreigner, illegal alien, fugitive, exile, asylum-seeker, refugee—this could be me, this could be you.
This is all of us.
Uprooted, exhausted, in an unfamiliar land, its mama’s hand we want to hold, papa’s arms we beg to carry us, its the soft fuzz of our baby’s head, the unbridled laughter of our children, that aligns our weary soul.
Donde esta mi Mama? Donde esta mi Papa?
Donde esta mi ninos? Donde esta mi bebe?
Tonight the rain falls heavy on this trailer roof, giant sobs from the gods of everything good, everything kind, everything just, everything I once thought this country stood for--that great lie I believed as a child-- a myth I no longer hold in these hands that tucked a favorite blanket around my son’s shoulders before I kissed him goodnight.
The wind bellows desperate blues, the trailer shudders, as voices still call:
Donde esta mi Mama?? Donde esta mi Papa??
Donde esta mi ninos?? Donde esta mi bebe??
This is all of us.
All of us.
Us.
Christy, I knew I could turn to your blog and find eloquent understanding of this anguish. Our apathy - my apathy - crushes me. I want to act on the side of good but realize that I’m merely one of the horrified, yet motionless, millions. What do we do to help these families?
Posted by: Greta | 06/25/2018 at 09:36 PM
Greta, I am with you and wish at times I could leave my current to-do's to fly to the border and do something more than cry in my trailer.
Posted by: Christy | 07/09/2018 at 09:05 AM