Only Connect

“Empathy:  the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also :  the capacity for this.”  –Merriam Webster Dictionary

The classroom was crowded with awkward adults and too-small chairs.  Crockpots burbled. The kids, still buzzing with adrenaline after performing the thrilling theatrical portion of the Third Grade Potlatch, were yanking on parental arms, clamoring in parental ears, and falling over each other in their haste to dig into the blatantly-not-Native-Alaskan lunch offerings.

Except for one kid.  She was hunched in her small plastic chair, tears running down her face.

I whispered to my own child, “Why is that little girl crying?”  I’d already intuited the answer -- but I wanted my eight-year-old’s take on the situation. 

My daughter glanced over quickly. “Her dad was supposed to come,” she whispered.  Then she added, unbidden, “Her parents got divorced recently, and I think that makes it extra hard for her.”

I think that makes it extra hard for her.  

Empathy is a concept that seems at once remarkably simple, and yet at the same time fascinatingly complex. It bubbles, iridescent, in the shared laughter of lifelong friends.  It quakes with stage-fright within the young actor’s parents.  It aches at a stranger’s loss. In the wordless glance of lovers, it is the joy and the tremor and the sheer humanity of deep connection: he understands.  

How crucial is empathy, for a child?  For an adult?  For a society? To what degree is it an innate skill, and to what degree is it a learned one?  These questions aren’t new; they’ve been rattling my brain for years.  I’ve wrestled with them when I’ve struggled to connect and communicate with adults who are close to me.  I’ve also spent a lot of time attempting to be a Good Mommy (or at least a Passable Mommy) to two kids who seem to differ wildly in their empathetic responses.

At the age of two, it was already obvious.  One of my twins was quick to sense subtle changes in my mood or her sister’s, and to offer a hug or a pacifier (respectively, that is; my oral fixation isn’t THAT bad.). A friend who regularly babysat my kids -- along with her own -- mentioned that she’d fallen into the habit of using this twin as a helper.  Apparently my toddler was able to understand that her little playmate had trouble walking on our uneven path, and earnestly offered her hand. The other twin… not so much.  “Mine!” was a favorite word in her vocabulary.

Over the subsequent six years, both kids grew and changed.  Both gained social skills.  Both evidenced some degree of generosity and kindness.  But one twin still seemed to struggle much more than her sister did in anticipating, understanding, and responding to the emotions of those around her.  And sometimes I worried.

Now, I whispered back to my young potlatch date, “Well, then, we need to invite her to eat lunch with us.”

“Yes,” my empathetic kid agreed immediately – but not without a tiny tinge of regret. My undivided attention is a rare prize.  Indeed, she and her sister had been thrilled when Jay and I said we would both be able to come to this event.  Jay, I knew, was squashed into a tiny chair in the class across the hall, earnestly balancing a paper plate of dubious delicacies.  Moreover, Crying Child is by no means a close friend to either of my kids.  “Sometimes she just isn’t very nice,” my daughter confided later.  “She says mean things about what I bring in my lunch.”  What?  Third graders scoff at homemade whole-grain bread?  Apparently, Crying Girl is into “pink stuff and TV shows”, rather than leaping in mud puddles, playing FBI Spy, and writing stories about secret portals into outer space. 

At that moment, though, it only mattered that she was a child who needed a grownup.  “Hi there.  I’m Molly’s and Lizzy’s mom.”  Yup, that’s my name.

The little girl looked up at me, tentatively, hopefully.

“Would you like to eat with us?” I asked.

Like magic, the tears disappeared.

Shuffling through the lunch queue, I helped my daughter and Crying Child fill their plates with food. This other kid, as it turned out, was picky.  And loud. Also, she could talk the hind leg off a donkey, a mule, and probably an alpaca, too.  She told me about her pets.  She told me about her father’s diabetes.  She told me everything, in an endless, poorly-modulated soliloquy that precluded all communication with my own child.  Empathizing with this lonely little human was easy -- but being nice to her took more effort.

As I’ve wrangled with how to teach my children to Share, Play Fair, and Not Be Selfish Little Bastards, it has dawned on me that being an empathetic person is not at all the same thing as being a nice person.  I’ve also come to realize that empathy consists of at least three interrelated but distinct components.  Intellectually being able to figure out what others feel (I’ll call this “knowing”) is different from vicariously experiencing emotions (“feeling”). Neither of these is precisely the same as giving a damn (“caring”). 

Cerebral understanding of others’ emotions does not presuppose a loving nature.  Such knowledge can help one figure out the most effective way to be kind, but it can also, alas, help one figure out precisely the most effective way to lie, to cheat, and to be cruel.  Socially maladroit kids are not the ones who morph into the vicious vipers of junior high.  Dictators?  Cult figures?  People who persuade everyone to drink the KoolAid?  A lot of them are masters of knowing-without-caring.

Conversely, it’s entirely possible to have a loving nature (that is, be deeply caring) without readily experiencing the emotions of others, or even being particularly adept at knowing what they are. The love emanating from such a person can sometimes be ill-timed, oddly expressed, or hard to interpret – and thus, sadly, hard to reciprocate -- but it is no less real.

Caring about others is undoubtedly a crucial trait – a society-building trait -- but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t occasionally feel like a burden.  I’d also argue that feeling – wallowing in the external miasma of joy or angst -- isn’t entirely positive. On the plus side, a child who senses the wash of emotions around her may find it easier to make friends and to be the sort of loving and caring soul that every parent wants to see their kid become.  On the other hand, she is also more likely to pick up on every ounce of negativity and every cue of subtle disapproval.  She is more likely to internalize even the tiniest social rules and taboos – including the insidious, nasty, undermining ones that drip through every corner of our culture.  You don’t fit in.  Girls can’t do that. You should be prettier. The socially myopic, on the other hand, may find it easier to be cool with being totally uncool.

At the potlatch, it didn’t take a huge amount of empathy for me to guess that what Crying Child wanted was simply someone to play parent to her right now.  When she helped herself to seven cookies for dessert, I gently told her that she might not feel very good at recess if she ate that many.  She seemed pleased by my interference.  “How about if I put back four?” she asked.  When I told her that this idea showed good judgment, she glowed with pride and rushed to replace the goodies.

As my kids have gotten older, I’ve realized a few things.  First, my less-empathetic two-year-old was actually… pretty normal.  Toddlers are mostly narcissists.  Second, the acquisition of empathy, like pretty much every other talent in the human repertoire, depends neither on pure nature nor on pure nurture, but a blend of both.  Third, even those with an innate talent for empathy may have a lot to learn.

I’ve also had time to think a bit about the possible ramifications of worrying too little – or too much -- about what other people think.  My less empathetic kid sometimes still seems a little me-focused, but she also delights me with her individualism.  Guess which eight-year-old girl would prefer to never, ever bathe; thinks her farts are super-funny; and collects knives?  “I like being awkward”, she told me recently.  She also remarked, as if reporting a delightful discovery, “Sometimes I feel like everybody else’s universe is completely different from mine.”  I kind of love her for that.  But I do try to remind her, gently, to always consider the feelings of others.  Amazing as it may seem, there are actually people who simply do not appreciate the merits of small, grimy, farting, knife-wielding little girls.

I’ve noticed that the more-empathetic kid sometimes buries her own desires, in order to avoid conflict or try to meet the needs of others.  This pipsqueak of a person falls all over herself to make me happy.  I kind of love her for that – it’s hard not to.  But there is always going to be more pain in the world than she – or anyone -- can handle.   As an adult, she may have days, as many of us do, when she just can’t bear to read the New York Times headlines – and that’s okay. I try to teach her that sometimes, it’s good to be different, to be yourself, to make demands.  Sometimes, pissing off other people may actually be the right thing to do – even if your voice shakes.  Sometimes, it’s okay to step out of the shoes of others, and back into your own.  

At home that evening, when I was thanking my potlatch-date for sharing me with her hapless classmate, her twin chimed in unexpectedly.  “That happened in my class, too,” she said.  She named one little boy who had sat alone, crying. Two or three years ago, I thought, this twin would not have noticed – or cared. “But Ben and Sarah’s parents took care of him, and then he was all right.” 

“Yeah,” her sister agreed.  “That’s how it was for us, too.  Everything was all right.”

Those two little crying children, they were all right. 

And my two children?  They were all right, too.

Take my kids, for example...

She is a conscientious student and always strives to do her best.  She is a pleasure to have in class.

 “Do I haaaaaaave to?”

You’re sure you didn’t mix up the report cards, Mrs. Impossibly Patient First Grade Teacher?  Because… I don’t think you know the child that I know. 

Do you have to?  Um, yeah, kid.  You. Have. To.  Despite all indications that the vast magnitude of my cruelty is overwhelming your neural circuits, I’m not, in fact, asking you to read Plato in the original Greek or walk across a wasteland of smoldering lava in your Dora the Explorer socks.   I’m asking you to amble over to the cutlery drawer and take out some spoons.  You know, those things that make it possible to eat pudding without getting it on your ears?  Yeah.  I’d like a few of those.  On the table.  And really, I’d like this to happen without any whining.

“But Mamaaaaa…”

There are times when parenting feels rewarding: truly, deeply, I-am-part-of-the-future awesome.  For example, a few days ago, one of my kids wanted to know the length of the human genome.  We Googled it together, and discovered that there are TWO METERS of DNA in every human cell, and that all the tiny encoded chains of nucleic acids in your body would reach to Pluto and back.  Yeah, how cool is that? 

There are times when parenting feels peanut-buttery: that is, run-of-the-mill, with occasionally chunky niblets of humor value to keep me going – like reading aloud all six novels in a series about Humphrey the classroom hamster, whom, despite myself, I’m kind of starting to bond with. 

And there are times when I wish that the notion of child-theft-by-gypsies were not a myth (and a racial slur to boot).  Or maybe not theft, per se, but child trading.  Because I’m pretty sure those gypsy (sorry, Romani) kids would be way more tractable than my own – and not have the same three knock-knock jokes imprinted on a mental Mobius strip.

At those times, of course, I am consumed by guilt.  Because Nice Parents do not have such thoughts.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my children.  I adore them; I dote on them; I would take on an angry bear on their behalf, armed only with my bitten-down fingernails and a pocketful of hair-snaggled rubber bands and used Kleenex.  I love my children… and yet I’ve often wondered why it is that despite the fact that I am viewing them through the lens of my positively-biased genetically-related bonded-since-infancy gaze, they nonetheless sometimes appear to be nightmarish little demons.  Conversely, I’ve wondered why other adults – who are under no particular imperative to love, like, or even tolerate my kids – often seem to see them as relatively functional small human beings.

I was proud of her courage to speak in front of her peers… Great job!

Ah.  So… the other twin doesn’t talk much at school, huh?  Uh-huh.  Yup.  THAT MUST BE BECAUSE SHE’S SAVING IT ALL UP.

“But I don’t want to go to bed!  I’m not tired!  Wait, I need to tell you about my book… so in the first part….

“… and then after they go into the cave, then their flashlights run out of batteries…

“…and they have these walkie-talkies… wait, Mom, I need to tell you about the walkie-talkies…

“…and then the one girl with the pony…

“…so then after they switched the batteries…

“… and then there’s another girl, and she’s in the cave too… Mom, wait, I’m not done yet!  Wait, listen!”

I meant to listen.  Really, I did. I mean, who could resist a twenty-minute oral book report on a novel entitled “Pony Pals”?  But my brain had melted fifteen minutes previously, and leaked out my ears.  Maybe it puddled somewhere in my stained hoodie, I’m not sure.  It was really too bad, because I’d been hoping to use it to help me parse the intricacies of the crisis in Syria, or to write a couple of scientific journal articles, or at the very least to make a marginally erudite pun on Facebook.

Facebook.  Facebook is where my parental guilt goes to metastasize.  On Facebook, given my place in the over-educated-middle-aged-people demographic, many of my friends went through the Kindergarten Rite of Passage with the baby of the family this fall.  The last one! On Facebook, there were many bittersweet parental sighs.  But… when my first one and my last one set off for their first day at University Park Elementary School two years ago, I did not weep; I exhaled.  And then I zoomed off to work, my spirits and my bike both free-wheeling.  Because someone else was taking care of my kids. 

Yeah, I know.  Not nice.  Wasn’t I supposed to be mourning the end of their babyhood?  Regretting the loss of some portion of my time with them, and some portion of my influence over their little lives?  Wasn’t I supposed to be concerned about the not-me influences they would be prey to in a big, bad world full of Other People? 

 “Mama, it’s not faaaaair!” 

At times like these, the Other People can have my kids.  On any given day, there are at least seventeen things that are “not fair”.  I’ve leveled with the kids: yup, life isn’t fair.  I’ve pointed out to them that most of the time, the not-fairness of the world has been working heavily in their favor.  This is commonly known as the “You should be grateful, because some kid is starving in a country you’ve never heard of” strategy.  It doesn’t work.  Or, maybe it only works on other people’s children, who invariably seem to remember, when in my care, to say “please” and “thank you” and “I had a very nice time” and even “Wow, you’re so cool”.  You think I’m making this up?  No, really, someone else’s offspring thinks I’m, like, awesome.  My own?  Not so much.

“You gave her the bigger piece!”

The thing is, I LIKE kids.  I always have.  I revel in their imaginative energy (“I will give you a ticket to our kingdom.  But you have to paint yourself with cranberries.”)  I am amused by their disarming honesty (“You have a really big nose, Nancy!”) I appreciate their peculiarly abstract view of the word, as evidenced by the poetry-magnet ode that appeared on the fridge (“He is warm butter.  He is a chocolate sandwich.  He is gorgeous.”)  Why, given that I genuinely like hanging out with kids, am I sometimes driven ape-feces loony by my own? 

Nice Parents definitely do not offer to sell, barter, or trade their children. 

Or… do they?  Maybe I’ve just been focusing on the positive.  I have a problem with that – always seeing the stupid glass as half-full, even when someone has clearing been filching my lemonade. 

Ok, I told myself.  Let’s go back and dig deeper.

Jackpot. 

In the past few weeks alone, two different friends of mine publically confessed (with photographic evidence) that their toddlers had decided to “decorate” the family car by creatively engraving its exterior with a rock.   One mom shared deadpan and marvelously unsympathetic reports on just how often her three sons were vomiting.  Another parent offered dark humor regarding little-kid nightmares and being woken from well-deserved slumber for the eleventeenth time.  And one, a peculiarly honest fellow, suggested that he would like to divorce his ten-year-old. 

I commiserated with a coworker whose two-year-old will not put on his snow boots for her, although the same task goes over just fine at daycare.  Why, she sighed, were all his meltdowns directed at her?  Another office-mate chimed in from behind the next segment of carpeted wall: “It doesn’t get any better as they get older!”  She just sent a kid off to college.  “It just shows they’re normal.”

Normal?  Someone out there has kids who are “normal”?  Then again… if every kid is abnormal in a different way, perhaps it makes sense that dealing with someone else’s normally-abnormal child feels like a gulp of fresh oxygen after being locked in a gym locker room for a week.

A couple of weeks ago, our family headed out on a three-day 20-mile hiking excursion that included nine adults and six (six!) kids between the ages of 6 and 10.  Although I wouldn’t bet my life on it, I’m pretty sure all fifteen of us managed to have a (mostly) good time, despite mud, hills, the ultimate inevitability of bedtime, and the innate unfairness of being between the ages of 6 and 10.  And for me, one of the greatest things about the trip (besides the hot tubs, because I can’t let this go by without mentioning the hot tubs) was the constant and sometimes hilarious shell-game of siblings and parents. 

For example, at one point, a kid from family A and a kid from family B were grooving together in the somewhat distant charge of the parents from family C, who had left their teenager at home in the nominal care of family D.  An extra adult with no kids of her own was happily hiking with the other kids from families A and B, who were getting along marvelously with one another, despite wanting to have nothing to do with their awful, terrible, respective siblings.  Meanwhile I hiked with Child E, who even ten miles into a long day was unfailingly charming.  Child F was the only one hiking with a parent.  By mile nine, she was moaning piteously.  However, she was sweet as a snickerdoodle a very short while later, splashing in a hot tub with me -- because she is normal.

Yes, it seems that this is precisely correct.  So says the Official Psychology Literature, and so says the common wisdom, and so says my cubicle-neighbor.  Kids do their very best whining, sniveling, and sociopath-impersonations for their parents – and only for their parents.  The teacher who thinks they are angels is not lying.  Neither is the neighbor, the friend, the anybody-but-you person who gets all the pleases and thank-yous and holding-together-of-emotions.  The tedious complaints?  The screaming, door-slamming awfulness?  Those are just for you.  Why?  Well, because your little Beelzebub knows you love him unconditionally.  Even when he’s lying on the floor shrieking.

Part of me wants to greet this harsh reality with a wail of my own:  “That’s not faaaaaair!”  But… in my heart I know it is fair.  For one thing, it’s payback for what I probably did to Dear Old Mom and Dad three decades or more ago.  But I also realize now that it’s more than fair – it’s actually good.  There’s a silver lining somewhere in the cumulonimbus of parental despair.  Because, ok, you can’t actually sell your kids, but occasional trading isn’t just a-ok, it’s necessary.  Kids have something to learn from Other Grownups.  And grownups have something to learn from Other Kids.  Somewhere out there is an adult with new ideas, a novel perspective, and some thoroughly exciting snacks to share.  Somewhere out there is a grownup who hasn’t been worn down by this particular child’s set of idiosyncrasies.  Somewhere out there is a grownup who has not yet heard those three knock-knock jokes.

A couple of days after the trip, Jay and I received a kind-hearted and eloquent thank-you message from the parents of family F:  Thanks… for giving a parenting break: most times, [Child F] did not even want us around, and we indulged in that freedom for a bit.

Oh, you are very welcome, my good friends.  I’m always happy to hang out with your imaginative, energetic, sharp-witted kid – on a hike, on a bike, in a show, on the go… (but keep the green eggs and ham out of the hot tub, okay?)  Besides, you are among the ranks of those who have spent their oh-so-valuable time with our own children.  To you – and to all who have talked to them, babysat them, taught them, or even biked around Iceland with them – thank you.

Today, by some peculiar serendipity related to half-written blog-posts, another friend made this comment on Facebook, directed at family A:  You should follow Nancy's advice precisely… Just keep her away from your girls or they, like ours, will suddenly find themselves happily involved in Fairbanks Shakespeare Theater productions for the next decade or two!

You hear that?  Lend me your kids, and I will corrupt them with four-hundred-year-old plays full of bloodshed and sexual innuendos!  Meanwhile, I’ll send you the twins.  I hear that one of them “speaks up” and that the other “always strives to do her best” so I’ll bet they’ll make a really good showing when they tell you those knock-knock jokes.

Race from the start

“It takes remarkably little for children to develop in-group preferences. Rebecca Bigler ran an experiment in three preschool classrooms, where 4- and 5-year-olds were lined up and given T shirts. Half the kids were randomly given blue T shirts, half red. The children wore the shirts for three weeks. During that time, the teachers never mentioned their colors and never grouped the kids by shirt color. The kids didn't segregate in their behavior. They played with each other freely at recess. But when asked which color team was better to belong to, or which team might win a race, they chose their own color. They believed they were smarter than the other color. "The Reds never showed hatred for Blues," Bigler observed. "It was more like, 'Blues are fine, but not as good as us.' "When Reds were asked how many Reds were nice, they'd answer, "All of us." Asked how many Blues were nice, they'd answer, "Some." Some of the Blues were mean, and some were dumb—but not the Reds.”

[from Nurtureshock, by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, 2009]

Nurtureshock was such a good read that it may have persuaded me to stop hiding from self-improving literature.  It was entertaining enough to distract me (via mp3) from my poor snow-biking skills, and scientific enough to satisfy my nerdy skepticism.  It also prodded me directly in my liberal-white-middle-class-parent complacency.  Because, according to the authors – and they had some compelling studies to back them up -- kids are inherently racist.   

Wait, I thought (still pedaling along), not my kids!  Or… were they? 

At some level, I already knew that Bronson and Merryman were right.  Children, like pro-sports-team fans, are obnoxiously zealous in their us-versus-them labeling and loyalties.  It’s not that babies are born with a color preference; it’s just that as soon as the mental neurons start firing, they start categorizing.  Kids are obsessed with “good guys” and “bad guys.” They avidly sort the world into “like me” and “not like me.”   According to a wealth of studies, countering this tendency takes more than vague platitudes about diversity, tiresome Dora stories, and footage of President Obama.  Little white kids whose well-meaning parents Just Don’t Talk About It… end up Just Not Getting It. 

The data were pretty clear.  What wasn’t clear was whether I was one of those lily-livered parents.  Were Molly and Lizzy getting mixed messages about race, I wondered?  Were they getting any messages at all?

Oh, I’d made sporadic efforts, in keeping with the generally distracted and unplanned nature of my parenting. In preschool, my kids met several peers who didn’t look much like their mommies or daddies, and we talked about it a bit, in the context of explaining adoption.  One of their best friends since infancy looks – at least at a glance -- more like her Native Alaskan daddy than like her blonde mommy.  I bumbled my way through some rambling Fairbanks-centric history lessons, struggling with an audience who could not fathom how the “long ago” of the gold miners was different from the “REALLY long ago” of the Bering Land Bridge.  My children were interested in the idea that some people had lived here for generations following a subsistence lifestyle, while others had arrived far more recently, following a lifestyle that included canned Spam, an obsessive interest in shiny or stinky stuff under the earth, and bad politics.  Nonetheless, the kids were confused.  No one in Fred Meyer was wearing cool outfits like the ones on display at the University Museum, and (unlike the New York suburbanites of my own childhood) most of the white people they know pick berries and eat moose, too.  I felt kind of dumb for trying. 

Now I wondered how well my kids had processed all this partial information.  I dredged my memory for clues.

I recalled one summer day when I’d been cajoling my then-four-year-olds to do some actual scrubbing in the bathtub, rather than just playing with their massive fleet of plastic toys. Molly paused in her lack-of-washing and stared down and her small, pinkish self.  She gave herself quite a perusal.  Then she announced, “I wish I was Tim!” 

“Um…”  I could hear Freud snickering at me.  Tim was one of her preschool buddies, a precocious and outgoing little guy. At a recent playdate at his parents’ farm, all the kids had ended up joyfully naked. “Why?” I asked, carefully.

She looked up at me with the ‘you-are-stupid’ look that somehow she’d managed to perfect before hitting kindergarten.  “Because then I wouldn’t have to wear sunscreen,” she explained. 

Well, duh, Mommy.  Tim’s parents had adopted him from Ethiopia.

Ok, so at age four, my white daughter wanted to be a black boy.  An unlikely aspiration, perhaps, but not precisely a racist one.

Fast-forward a year or so. 

Lizzy stood at the cash register at Value Village, counting out three dollars in dimes. And nickels.  And pennies.  Coins accumulated in little heaps.  Occasionally she lost count and had to recount a pile. All the while, she was cradling her intended purchase -- gently but possessively – with its head nestled on her shoulder, amidst Lizzy’s fine pale hair.

It was a doll. Not a baby-doll, but a little-kid doll, perhaps intended to look about Lizzy’s own age – which, at the time, was only five. It had a soft, cuddly body and a plastic face with a sweet smile and wide eyes.  Its thick black hair was tied with ribbons, and its plastic-and-cloth skin was a deep shade of brown. 

Luckily, there was no line behind us at the register.  But still, I fidgeted anxiously, sure that we must be trying the patience of the young cashier.  Even I was getting twitchy.  (Yes, kid, I’m vaguely proud that you can count by fives so well, but can you do it faster?)

To my surprise, though, I found that the cashier wasn’t frowning or tapping her foot.  In fact, a small smile was playing on her lips.  “Is this your own money?” she asked her small customer.

Molly answered for her.  (This happens a lot. Sometimes I try to curtail it, and sometimes I give up; consistent parenting is not my strong suit.) “We saved our allowances,” she announced proudly.  Her purchase, an only-slightly-used-looking teddy, was already safely bagged. 

Lizzy had finally completed her laborious calculations.  Cautiously, she held out the doll so that its price code could be scanned ($2.99).  She used both hands, earnest as a new parent allowing a stranger to admire her infant.  Now, the joy of her purchase overwhelmed her reticence.  With almost palpable ecstasy wreathing her face, she beamed up at the cashier.  “Isn’t she beautiful?” she sighed. 

The cashier smiled back down at her as the scanner beeped.  “So… you got to choose whatever you wanted, with your own money?”  She relinquished the paid-for item back to its new owner.

“Yes,” my daughter breathed.  “I chose her all by myself.”  She clasped the doll to her chicken-ribbed little chest.  “Isn’t she BEAUTIFUL?” she repeated.

The young woman’s smile was large and genuine as she smiled at this tiny little blonde person and her wealth of pennies.   Her own hair was thick and black.  Her own skin was a deep rich shade of chocolate brown. “Yes,” the cashier said.  “Yes, she is beautiful.” 

So far so good.  Such cultural sensitivity!  A happy parenting moment!  Then the doll came home.  I asked Lizzy what name she had chosen.

“Gingersnap,” Lizzy announced with finality.

I winced.  It sounded like some kind of weird condescending southern nickname.  Why ain’t that swee-ut, Aunt Jemima makes pancakes, and her little pickaninny Gingersnap bakes cookies!  I teetered on the brink of trying to explain this to Lizzy, of trying to convince her to name her doll something respectable like Rachel or Susan.  But I knew that to her, the name was mellifluous, delicious, complimentary, and utterly without stereotype or association.  Growing up, I played with dolls named “Bedtime,” “Good Girl,” and “Fat Doll.”  Who was I to talk?  Besides, I couldn’t find the courage or the words to explain hundreds of years of enslavement, oppression, colonialism, and hatred to someone whose concept of bad human  behavior included hair-pulling or sneaking a piece of candy.  Gingersnap it was.  And Gingersnap was beloved.

Soon after the purchase of Gingersnap, Martin Luther King Jr. Day (2012) rolled around.  It occurred to me that I should talk about race, and the shameful underbelly of American history.  I made a feeble attempt to start a discussion.  But my kids beat me to it. 

“Oh, we already learned all about him,” Molly told me, with the kind of confidence of knowledge that is only possible among people who have recently lost their first baby teeth.  She rummaged in her ladybug backpack and extracted a coloring page.  It depicted two boxes of crayons – the kind of simple eight-packs that were the industry standard in her kindergarten class.  She had colored the first box entirely blue.  The box itself was blue.  So was every crayon.  The second box was more standard, a rainbow of hues.  “It’s better if you have all the colors,” Molly explained. 

I have a dream…

“Yes,” I agreed, both pleased and disappointed by this opportunity to duck the uglier side of the subject.  “All colors of crayons, and all colors of people.” 

Both kids nodded, beaming because Mommy understood the lesson.  With a mental nod to Frederick Douglas, Rosa Parks, William Paul, and thousands of others -- the President not the least of them -- I reassured myself that my kids, while possibly deeply confused about the role of Crayola in civil rights, were not racist. And I left it at that. Again.

But that was last year. 

Martin Luther King Day rolled around again in 2013, and now the kids were six – a whole twenty percent more mature.  Now they rode the school bus.  Now they shared recess with second and even third graders.  What had they already overheard?  What might they overhear in the future?

Too clearly, I recalled the divisiveness that gradually encroached throughout my own childhood – not just with regard to race, but with regard to practically everything.  In first grade, I played with Aaron, with Daniel, with Doris (who was Hispanic) and with Yvette (who was black).  But after about age six or seven, social pressure dictated that boys didn’t play with girls, and the Puerto Rican and Haitian kids started socializing mainly amongst their own groups.  I remember telling my mother that Aaron could not come home with me on the bus to play, because other kids would make fun of us; we were eight.  I recall the second graders who had received First Communion surrounding shy Jennifer, who had not, and telling her that she was going to Hell.  Even the arbitrary division of the Reds and the Blues by Coach Mitchell for Field Day resulted in vehement Us and Them cliques on the playground.  I was discomfited. 

Then I read Nurtureshock.

I started talking with my kids.  We talked about the real Martin Luther King Jr., not the crayon version.  We talked about slavery.  We talked about civil rights, and segregation, and Whites Only.  We talked about women’s suffrage, and No Irish Need Apply, and the broad swath of our pock-marked, ugly, struggling history.

A few days ago, I read my children a bedtime story about the Greensboro lunch counter sit-ins of 1960.  When the story was over, both kids looked troubled, and thoughtful – especially Molly.  She’s prone to empathy.  At last she said, “I don’t think people will ever be that way again.”

Oh, Molly…

I would have liked to have agreed with her, and left it at that.  But if we’re going to continue changing the world, then pretty soon, my generation is going to need her generation’s help.  So I told my six-year-olds about extant racism, modern-day social injustice, and ongoing efforts to educate away hatred – close to home, and overseas. 

It broke my heart.  But it also felt deeply, wonderfully honest.

I tucked the kids into their little-person-sized bunk beds, top and bottom.  Under her fuzzy blue blanket – the one that used to be Daddy’s when he was little -- Lizzy cuddled up with her doll.  Her beautiful doll.  Her doll with the dark eyes, indubitably tangled black hair, and deep brown skin. 

Sleep tight, Lizzy.  Sleep tight, Gingersnap.