Thank You for Holding Still While I Hurt You

you warmed my heart with your disaffective blankness

At the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, guest columnist Beth Collums is grateful.

In an open letter that starts with “Dear Kiddos,” Collums offers gratitude and congratulations:

To the kindergartner who never got to have a first day of school, to the graduating senior who never got to walk across a stage after 13 years of arduous work; thank you. To the seventh grader with an Individualized Education Program (IEP) for learning disabilities who had no special education teacher to help, to the hungry 9-year-old with food insecurity who wasn’t sure where breakfast and lunch would come from; thank you. To the fifth grade girl who had to stay at home alone all day because her single mom works, to the 15-year-old boy who didn’t get to play basketball because all sports were canceled; we thank you.

All the big things and all the little things you’ve given up mean something to us. We see them and we are grateful. We know that you have been shaken to the core and we are with you.

Thank you for adjusting your lives to the lives of others, even at a great cost to yours. Thank you for all the ways you have worn the masks and not complained, listened to news that was conflicting and put your head down and did your work despite all the adults arguing over politics, masks, plexiglass partitions and hand sanitizer. Thank you for doing your homework on a computer before you learned to write. Thank you for dressing up and having a ballet recital on Zoom instead of a stage. Thank you for being OK with walking home from the playground when the swings were taken down and caution tape was installed.

There’s no actor in any of this, no one who did any of it. A child couldn’t play basketball because “all sports were canceled.” Who cancelled them? Not mentioned. Precisely how and why was “the hungry 9-year-old with food insecurity” not sure “where breakfast and lunch would come from,” and who caused it? Not mentioned. These things happened to children, somewhere deep inside a thick causal fog. A few paragraphs down, Collums drops this remarkable line: “You were not the reason or cause for the tough times. It wasn’t your fault. It just happened.” No one did it; it just happened.

So thanks, kids! Good job! “We are with you.” The “we” who are with you over your pain and loss are the “we” who caused your pain and loss, but don’t worry, because we are with you! That must be quite a comfort.

This is just the beginning of the list of things that Collums doesn’t mention or discuss. About those children “walking home from the playground when the swings were taken down and caution tape was installed”: Is it true that outdoor playground swings were a major source of SARS-CoV-2 infection, or that very young children were the population most at risk for serious illness from that infection? Was taping off swings a rational form of risk management?

“You have sacrificed so much, for the most part, for the safety of others,” Collums writes, almost getting to the core of the thing: The things that were done to children weren’t done for them, but done for others. We sacrificed your childhood, but we didn’t sacrifice it for you. But anyway. Thanks, kids!

The things Collums is thanking children for: Did the children have any choice in the matter? Did the choices that were imposed on them make sense or have a real purpose? Whatever. Thanks for enduring pain, three year-old.

And then:

Now we’re going to do our part; to commit to ensure your generation has a chance, as the others did to finish school on time, to commit to remediate learning deficits incurred in the pandemic, to commit to giving you the mental health services that you deserve because of life-altering trauma and setbacks due to the pandemic and its impact.

Our deepest form of thanks to our children is that we’re going to get them mental health services to deal with their life-altering trauma. It’s really a warm and caring message of celebration, isn’t it?

“From the bottom of our hearts, thank you, kids.”

Now go take your psychiatric medications, and remember to stay masked up around mommy. Love you!