FEATURE — An eighteen-year-old white boy killed nearly a dozen people – all black – at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York last week. We’ve all heard the news.
I wonder what it’s like to be that boy’s mother this week. In the aftermath. Having raised him for eighteen years.
Did she read that boy Goodnight Moon, searching together for the little mouse on every page, when he was a baby?
Did she guide his pudgy fingers, still slightly sticky from fruit snacks, through the little holes The Very Hungry Caterpillar made as he ate through the one apple, the two pears, the three plums, the lollipop, the chocolate cake, the pickle, the salami, the Swiss cheese and finally the one, nice green leaf?
Did she draw a warm bath and marvel with him as he discovered his hands and how to splash?
Did she reward him with pink Hubba-Bubba bubble gum when he pooped in the toilet for the first time, even though he was scared he might fall in?
Did she cry with him when he discovered the lights on his police-themed light up, the ones that flashed red and blue with every stomp, stopped working after just two weeks?
Did she erupt in delightful giggles with him as he danced with Elmo, with only a diaper and two fists high in the air?
Did she cheer for him when, after days and days of trying to pedal and balance on that old two-wheeled blue bike, it finally clicked and he rode up the block all by himself, his face alight with pride?
Did she haul him to soccer and karate and basketball?
Did she succor him when he got left out?
Did she have dance parties in the kitchen on Thursday afternoon just because?
Did she make Slurpee runs to 7-Eleven with him on hot summer days?
Did she trudge up snow-covered hills, hands in mittens, dragging a two-man foam sled for them both to ride down the bumpy hill, shrieking with delight until they spilled in a heap at the bottom?
What about his first day of kindergarten? And his last day of school? What about teaching him to drive and how to mow the lawn and how to chop an onion, hands in a chef’s claw, so he didn’t cut his fingers?
His mother. In all those little moments. She couldn’t have wanted this—this massacre, this hate, this fear –for that little boy who is now almost a man.
Because I have three white boys, boys like him, and I can’t imagine. I can’t imagine any of it.
Even when they punch holes in the basement wall. Even when they slam doors on their way out for mandatory dog walks. Even when they tell me I’m annoying for waking them up for school when they’ve slept through their alarms.
As I watch them hunched over their bowls of Reese’s Puffs cereal this morning, I think about what kind of men they will grow up to be. I think about what lessons they have learned in my home over the years of books, bedtime settles, potty training, first days of school, sledding and Slurpees.
And I think about the lessons I still want them to learn.
Mostly I want this: I hope they learn, above everything else, to be strong enough not to hate.
Kat Dayton is a columnist for St. George News. Any opinions given are her own and not representative of St. George News staff or management.
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