How do I write about the events of the last few weeks? What can I say that has not already been said?
When I wrote last month’s column, celebrating Mother’s Day and my boys’ 10th birthday, I was, at the time, making a special effort to take in all that is good in my little world — despite a virus ravaging cities, nursing homes and local economies, and a quarantine that had upended plans, isolated loved ones and sprinkled a pall of depression over summer’s coming bloom.
Since then, in what feels like a matter of days, a cyclone has hit. Information and imagery whirls and assaults. We have stepped through the looking glass and come face-to-face with ourselves. It is necessary, I know, but it is uncomfortable and overwhelming.
And I’m afraid I do not have profound words to offer.
Wherever I could since becoming a mother — in blog posts, on social media, in this column — I have shared my thoughts on race and racism and the fears I have about raising Black children in this deeply damaged society.
In fact, the first commentary I wrote for the Sun as a freelancer — before I had a monthly parenting column — was about the casual and stereotypical labeling of one of my twin sons by a friendly healthcare worker, who opined that my child might one day grow up to be a rapper. Without meaning to, the worker had cast my 2.5-year-old into a category formed by his own unconscious bias. I wrote then about how much it stung.
More than seven years later, it still stings. My child says he wants to be an engineer when he grows up, but every time he writes a song and sings it to a hip-hop beat, I remember. Anytime he says that he likes a rap song on the radio, I remember.
It is a burdensome thing to carry around all the endings that a group of people have decided for your child, while simultaneously trying to raise that child to believe he is capable of writing his own story. It is heavy and tiresome, a monotonous taunt that keeps me awake at night. It colors everything I do.
Frankly, I am tired of having to explain that to people.
When I signed up to write a parenting column every month, I knew that my voice as a mother of Black children was significant. I knew I had been handed an opportunity — and a responsibility ― to help people understand my family’s point-of-view, our dreams, foibles and joys. They needed to see my children’s beautiful brown faces. Our adorable oddities; our relatable normalness.
I get that this role is important, and most times I do not mind taking it on. Mainly, I write to help other parents (of all kinds) see themselves in my family’s day-to-day, and know they’re not alone. If sharing stories about my three favorite people helps to crack the shell of someone’s lifelong bigotry, then that’s a bonus.
But at this critical, history-making moment in our nation, I am sorry. I don’t have the words.
These last few weeks, I find myself feeling tossed about like a tiny boat on a furious sea. The virus and the home-schooling and the police brutality and the social isolation and Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor and Christian Cooper and George Floyd and protests and cell-phone videos and the National Guard and masks at the grocery store and even in the midst of all that, still, in my Baltimore, young men murdered day in and day out.
The latest one that I learned about, Aaron Sutton, wanted to be an engineer — just like my son — and was also, of all things, a musician, a rapper. The confluence of similarities, the irony of why he was home in the first place — for safety from the virus — it shakes me to the core. The unfairness of it all, the very predictability of it all! I want to scream at the entire world! Here is a son who is no longer with us and my heart bleeds as a mother.
It is all just too much. And I am exhausted from feeling all of it, all at once.
I know I should have more to say. But I am no sage. I am just a mother of three Black children, trying to protect them. You’ll forgive me then if I spend what’s left of my energy doing just that.
So many things in this crazy world seem determined to bring them down, which is just what racism foretells, what it craves. I will not yield to it.
It will be that much harder to bring them down, with me, their Black mother, building them up.
Tanika Davis is a former Baltimore Sun reporter who works in communications at Constellation. She and her husband have twin 10-year-old sons, an 8-year-old daughter, a perpetually messy house and rapidly appearing gray hairs. She also needs a nap. She can be reached at tanikawhite@gmail.com. Her column appears monthly.