Toward Kindness
I’ve been writing these past few days with my grandson at my side. He’s just over 2 months old. I’ve been giving my daughter and SIL ample space during their parental leave time, but as they return to jobs and responsibilities I’m pitching in more, and this writing with the kid at my side is apt to become a continuing thing.
The boy is tiny. Like, tiny. He’s so fragile it scares me. He’s still on oxygen, his little lungs pumping, his little heart beating. He cries when he’s hungry, or needs his diaper changed. So, usually, when he cries, those are the two main solutions.
Sometimes he just cries, and I don’t know why. I do know if I put my hand on his arm, it usually reassures him. Talking to him seems to reassure him as well. Reading him what I’ve just written reassures both of us.
Mostly he sleeps.
I’m writing, once again, about the end of the world. I’m almost at the conclusion of this particular story. Earlier this morning, I was simulating nuclear explosions on a map of the United States online, looking up how far the damage would spread. How far the blast radius would spread, how many would die immediately, how many would eventually succumb to radiation poisoning. What the ensuing EMP (electromagnetic pulse) event would look like, and how it would affect the power grid and communications.
I find, with this tiny, fragile, precious life beside me, that I’m writing toward kindness. I’m envisioning a different kind of world. This is not fully a conscious choice. I created a cataclysmic event (not the nuclear bomb, the bomb is supposed to be the remedy to another, even more cataclysmic event), and the people in the story just started helping each other. Helping each other, and learning from each other, and discovering that together they were stronger and more resilient than they were alone. This is not the story I was planning to write, but it is the story that emerged.
So, as our disgraced ex-President plots revenge from Florida and a Congresswoman posts anti-trans remarks in the halls of Congress to drum up publicity in a stunning act of performative cruelty (both headlines from today’s news), I am trying to create a fictional world where we look to each other for help and strength, for love and hope.
Here in the real world, I turn to the fussing child sleeping next to me, and touch his arm, reassuring us both. His cries trail away as he falls back into sleep. I keep writing, toward kindness.